The deep-sea researchers were surveying an ocean ridge off the coast of Hawaii in 2015 and amid ordinary ocean floor fare — a bit of coral, some volcanic rock — they came across something surprising.
“Where did this guy come from? Holy cow!” one researcher said to his colleague.
During the moment caught on camera, the brain-like curves of a sponge about the size of a minivan came into view. As one of the scientists exclaimed in the video, “This is the largest thing I’ve seen underwater.”
Now, a new study reports that it is the largest sponge ever documented, at about 11.5 feet long, more than 6.5 feet wide and 4.9 feet high. That’s about the size of a minivan. In the video, the researchers immediately voiced their suspicion that it could be the biggest sponge in the world.
![The massive sponge photographed at a depth of 2117 meters in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument by a the ROV Deep Discoverer and b its companion ROV Seirios.](http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2016/05/sponge-a.jpg)
According to the study published in Marine Biodiversity, it was discovered in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands during an expedition of the Okeanos Explorer – the “only federally funded U.S. ship assigned to systematically explore our largely unknown ocean for the purpose of discovery and the advancement of knowledge.”