A remotely operated vehicle filmed a life-form this summer on the seafloor that was utterly strange and incomprehensible — at least to us. It was a knobbly blob, cornflower blue and blooming from the brown sludge more than 1,300 feet undersea.

The vehicle, which was controlled by researchers aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s vessel Okeanos Explorer, had glimpsed a number of the blue blobs on that day in waters southwest of St. Croix. The organism stumped scientists observing the livestream from the remote camera, and the headlines announcing its discovery marveled over the creature’s strangeness, calling it “alien-like blue goo” and a “mystery blob-like creature.”

When humans encounter life-forms that are unfamiliar or strange to us, our instinct is often to distance ourselves from them. We gawk at how the blueprint of their body veers from our own. Sometimes they confuse or repulse us. Reports about the blue goo described it as “formless, faceless and limbless,” descriptors defined in opposition to ourselves, our faces and our limbs. Before we have a chance to know what the blue goo might be, we are told that whatever it is, it is not like us.

In writing a book about sea creatures, I’ve found this language often applied to organisms living in the deep sea. About five minutes into an episode of the nature documentary series “Blue Planet II,” David Attenborough describes the deep sea as an “alien world.”

I understand his impulse. Some parallels are obvious. As I watch a transparent-faced barreleye fish drift through the dusky waters of the so-called twilight zone, the white flecks of marine “snow” look remarkably like stars.