No, the Ocean Didn’t Grow Hair. It’s the Garden Eel!

(light-hearted music)

[Narrator] Oh, nothing to see here.

Just a sea floor turning into a wriggling mass of hair.

Good news is, it's not hair.

Even better news, these are a righteous

variety of eel.

Specifically, they're garden eels.

So named because someone got high as hell

and decided this looked like a garden.

Thousands of these things can gather

in one patch of sea floor.

And, while they may look like a collective nightmare,

they're actually harmless plankton feeders.

See them jerking around?

They're snagging all the tiny animals

floating around in the Ocean's currents.

And notice how they're all facing the same way.

That's a good indication of how the water's flowing.

But you can't see most of the garden eel.

It's burrow is deep enough that

it can fully retreat if a predator approaches.

To keep that burrow from collapsing,

the eel excretes a goo that cements into a tube.

All it has to do is anchor itself

with its highly muscular tail

and wait for food to come to it.

Not a bad life if you ask me.

That is, if you can get over the crowds.