Giant tentacled living thing forms off the Australian coast NASA's Aqua satellite spotted the giant swirl. A GIGANTIC living thing has formed in the ocean off the coast of Australia and it has massive tentacles. It is more than 100km wide and its fluorescent blue sheen has been spotted by NASA satellites in the south-eastern Indian Ocean. It all sounds a little ominous - like those giant oarfish that were popping up from the depths of the sea a few months ago - it's not. As a matter of fact, it's beautiful. While it looks like whirlpool, but it's actually a giant bloom of plankton in a spiral current called an eddy. The swirl has tentacles more than 100 km wide. Plankton are microscopic organisms which live off sunlight, water and nutrients. Eddies, such as this one, often stir up the nutrients for the blooms to grow. That may be what happened here. But whatever caused it, it's spectacular. And it's just 600km off our coast. It's caused by an eddy of Plankton.