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School of Sea Nettles, Monterey, California, 2007

In the midst of an underwater ballet, a school of sea nettles drifts through California's Monterey Bay Aquarium. Chrysaora fuscescens is a type of jellyfish found in coastal waters from Alaska to California. The invertebrate hunts by trailing its long sting-cell-covered tentacles and ruffled mouth-arms through the water, combing for zooplankton and larval fishes.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Swarm Theory," July 2007, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by Peter Essick