How Life Thrives Under the Ocean’s Crushing Pressure
Like most deep-sea biologists, I have a large collection of decorated Styrofoam cups. A couple dozen line the bookshelf of my office, each displaying a…
Biggest Squid Ever!
Sweet Jesus! Several news agencies are reporting that New Zealand fisherman in the Ross Sea caught the LARGEST SQUID EVER FOUND. It’s not Architeuthis dux,…
View More Biggest Squid Ever!Books of the Ocean, One Accurate and One Not. Pt. II
I asked Crissy Huffard, a cephalopod biologist, to look over Volume 3 (No. 164 of 307) of Haggis-On-Whey’s World of Unbelievable Brilliance: Animals of the…
View More Books of the Ocean, One Accurate and One Not. Pt. IIVermes
What’s 200 feet long, has 18 ways to reproduce, and breaks into pieces? The worm. Vermes.
View More VermesIs That a Blind Crab in Your Pocket?
From stuff.co.nz… Nothing gets National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist Kareen Schnabel’s pulse racing quite like deep-sea crustaceans. Oddly creatures of the deep…
View More Is That a Blind Crab in Your Pocket?Deep water warming off Russia
Researchers from the neatly monikered Institute of Low Temperature Science at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan are showing that intermediate water (200-2000m) off Russia has warmed significantly over the past 50 years. The warming trend is accompanied by decreasing oxygen content. The warmer water is attributed to a decrease in (cold) shelf water production in the Sea of Okhotsk, an epicenter of global warming.
View More Deep water warming off RussiaGIANT ISOPODS!
Via Akeakamai, I found this gem of a video from JAMSTEC’s Shinkai 6500. The video shows several typical scavenging organisms, crabs, eels, and GIANT ISOPODS…
View More GIANT ISOPODS!Arctic mounds have gassy past
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) scientists working in the Arctic Ocean unraveled the geological origin of many mysterious mounds, called “pingos”, off Canada’s north coast. Pingos are small, dome-shaped, ice-cored hills about 40m tall, found along the coast of the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula. Earlier studies claimed these features were formed on land, and then submerged when sea level rose following the end of the last ice age, over 10,000 years ago. Apparently, the reverse may be true.
View More Arctic mounds have gassy pastNo Fish, No Cry…
Why no cry? Because the government is picking up our paycheck! To further prove the economic futility of a deep-sea fishery. Out of AAAS in…
View More No Fish, No Cry…Offshore Oil Deposit Holds Out on the Human Race
This week’s post, There is Plenty of Oil, generated a heated discussion about the finer points of peak oil and oil reserves. In line with…
View More Offshore Oil Deposit Holds Out on the Human RaceBig Day for Science, Bad Day for Hagfish
First time a hagfish has been collected from a vent.
View More Big Day for Science, Bad Day for Hagfish