deep sea
zooillogix | June 21, 2010Stunning footage of deep-sea squids from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), where researchers use remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to observe and record deep-sea animal behaviors.
sb admin | May 17, 2010So a week back or so, a number of friends read an article about death by rectal eel and immediately thought of me. For those of you who missed the story, it went a little something like this:
* Chinese man gets drunk with friends and passes out
* Friends think it would be hilarious to insert a large living swamp eel into the man's butt while he is unconscious
* Hilarity does not ensue. In fact, the man dies. Chinese doctor says the eel "consumed the man's bowels"
The article was widely reported in major news outlets like CNN and the Times, but I am linking instead to the UK edition of…
laelaps | May 13, 2010Components of the newly-described Fezouata fauna. a, Demosponge Pirania auraeum b, Choiid demosponge c, Annelid worm d, Organism showing possible similarities to halkieriids e, Possible armoured lobopod f, Thelxiope-like arthropod g, Marrellomorph arthropod, probably belonging to the genus Furca h, Skaniid arthropod i, Spinose arthropod appendage
apparatus consisting of six overlapping elements. From Van Roy et al, 2010.
When the Cambrian period comes up in conversation, it is usually in reference to the evolutionary "explosion" which occurred around 530 million years ago. Animal fossils from…
laelaps | April 10, 2010
For deep sea scavengers, a dead tuna is an exquisite feast. For more on what happens to bodies which come to rest on the seafloor, see my post on bone-eating worms and this video of a whale fall.
laelaps | March 29, 2010
As I mentioned in today's post, dead whales provide food and homes for a variety of marine organisms, and this video (uploaded by Kevin Zelnio of Deep Sea News) shows how whale fall communities change over time. It was produced by the laboratory of Dr. Craig Smith, University of Hawaii.The bone-dwelling worms I wrote about can be seen starting at the one minute mark.
zooillogix | October 9, 2008A joint UK-Japanese team has discovered the new record holder for the world's deepest living fish. At 7.7km deep in the Japan Trench, the researchers managed to take some great video of Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis doing its thing. The clowns at Deep Sea News have already covered this and we suggest you check out their site for more info, but the video below shows these deepwater fish gathering for Sunday supper.
Thanks to Tessa K and others for demanding that we ripoff DSN. Our pleasure!
zooillogix | August 26, 2008Some people look at this and see a terrifying undersea monster with potrusible jaws like our old pal from Alien. I see my dog Izzy playfully tugging on my sleeve... after some sort of horrible experiment that mutated her into a nightmarish killing machine. Kidding kidding.
The goblin shark is a fascinating resident of the deep sea. They are most commonly associated with the waters around Japan where most specimens are recovered as by-catch from fishing trawlers. When a goblin shark finds its prey, it protrudes its jaws and uses a tongue-like muscle to suck the victim into its sharp front…
zooillogix | March 21, 2008Researchers from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research have discovered hundreds of potentially new species. Part of the International Polar Year survey program, the critters were hauled up from the briny depths around Antarctica. Among the 30,000 once living beings now in formaldehyde are huge sea spiders, jellyfish with 12-foot tentacles, enormous sea snails and starfish. The expedition was also made into a documentary entitled DeepStar Six...
Giant Macroptychaster sea star measuring 60 cm across
Antarctic toothfish (1.81 m long, 57 kg)
CR McClain from Deep…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2008tags: luminescent marine animals, Deep Sea, Deep Blue, streaming video
Scenes and music are from the movie "Deep Blue", rearranged to make this little video, which shows mostly luminescent creatures that are living in the deep sea. These animals are bioluminescent, but to see that, you'd have to turn the lights out, and then they'd glow a bluish-white. However, these animals glow with rainbow colors due to diffraction by their bodies of the light that is being shown onto them for the purposes of photography. Imagine: we know more about the moon than we know about the deep sea! [1:15]