Photographer Captures Once-in-a-Lifetime Shots of a Fish Trapped Inside a Jellyfish

Australia’s photojournalist Tim Samuel captured a once-in-a-lifetime image while free diving off the coast of New South Wales’ Byron Bay. The incredible photographs depict the strange sight of a fish trapped within a jellyfish. Even stranger, as per Samuel, the entrapped fish could control the jellyfish’s movement, like a warped form of a living and breathing submarine.

The photos appear to catch the poor little fish’s expression of utter dread (or perhaps confusion?) as he is trapped in his jelly prison. Samuel believes that he has never had anything like this in all his spending years in the sea. He has been a photographer for almost five years and a surfing teacher before that.

Despite the fish’s frightened expression, Ian Tibbetts, an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, told Australian Geographic that “it is difficult to tell whether disaster has just struck, or whether the fish is happy to be in there.”

It is possible that this tiny fellow just missed his mark because some species of fish seek refuge beneath the spikes of jellyfish. No matter how you look at it, Samuel’s photographs are unquestionably the strangest sighting of the day.