New Deep Ocean Creatures

An anonymous reader writes "NORFANZ was a recent expedition that went really deep into the ocean in the search for new species that live in the largely unchartered waters of the Tasman Sea. Check out the site and some very cool pics."

Comments

Re:also of interest

[Trigun]

It turned out to be a rotting corpse of a giant sea squid.

For those so inclined

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

to own a "coffinfish", a species very close in look and character can be had easily. The marine fish is known as a "frogfish" and are highly interesting creatures to keep in a dedicated reef-tank.

Just FYI

Re:also of interest

[Trigun]

Here's the RedNova article on it.

Cyrano was real, though.

[Medievalist]

In the Pacific Spookfish caption it says:

"In the USA it is known as a Long-nosed Chimaera while in Europe they use the common name Cyrano Chimaera, named after the fictional French character Cyrano de Bergerac, who had a very long nose"

Savien Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) is not a fictional character.

I emailed this nitpick in to the website, with a few details of de Bergerac's biography. Perhaps it will be fixed anon.

New tape of squid

[singularity]

No, this is not about the large piece of blubber that they found on the beach.

This article has pictures and a video of a very cool new large species of squid. It seems to fly through the water with wings, and has cool alien-like arms coming off the rear of it.

Amazing that is has been spotted in four different oceans, but no one has seen it before. It says a lot about how much we do not know about the oceans.

As fisheries are wiped out, fishermen go deeper.

[Medievalist]

For example, the formerly plentiful Patagonian and Antarctic Toothfishes (known in the restaurant trade as "Chilean Sea Bass" despite being amazingly ugly deep-sea dwellers) are well on their way to being fished to extinction.

Like many large fish, they have a long reproductive cycle, and thus are easily driven to extinction by modern fishing methods. Not that the fishing industry as a whole isn't fishing pretty much everything to commercial extinction, but they can do it a lot faster to species that take a long time to become reproductive adults.

Blue Planet - Seas of Life

[phildog]

If you find this stuff at all interesting, I urge you to check out the 8 part miniseries Blue Planet - Seas of Life. These originally aired in the US on the Discovery channel (I believe the BBC was the first), but you can still get the DVDs from the merchant of your choice. I'm not sure the 2nd four episodes are on DVD yet.

The Discovery Channel Website doesn't indicate that these will air again anytime in the near future. You will also note that the Discovery Channel's web strategy is severely lacking because there is no way to have them notify you when it is coming on again. Or are they just being obscure because they reap more profits from DVD sales?

But I digress, this series kicks ass. It doesn't focus solely on the deep-sea critters, but rather casts a wide net. If you saw this show and were not completely freaked out by the presence of crazy brine pools at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, you aren't very curious about the world you live on.