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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."
If you like this stuff, read this recent news story:
Giant sea specimen baffles scientists
There's some funky stuff going on down there. Like the dating habits of the Humpback Anglerfish.
"For me, this bizarre fish (the size of a tennis ball) is one of the most fascinating creatures in the deep sea. It has it all, its black, has big savage teeth, little nasty pin eyes, a big flabby stomach ready to fit in anything it can catch (irrelevant of size) and a rod lure off the top of its head with a glowing tip to coax in stupid prey. It doesnt stop there: its flesh is watery, its bones are very light (barely coated by a thin layer of calcium carbonate) and it can barely swim (theres not much of a tail). This animal just hangs mid-water waving its little lure and waiting to chomp. And this is only what the female looks like! The male is completely different. Hes very small and looks like a black jellybean with fins. He has no lure, has big eyes, huge nostrils and a fairly small mouth with curved hooked teeth. His body is made of strong red muscle for swimming long distances. Why the difference? Shes looking for food, hes looking for her. She releases anglerfish-type perfumes into the water and he spends all his time swimming around looking and smelling for her. When he eventually finds her (in the dark), he latches on to her side (with his hooked teeth) and drinks her food-rich blood in return for producing the sperm she needs when it comes time to release her eggs."
Or the Mossish ( Caulophryne jordani )
"Like other anglerfishes, males are very different. They are small and have simple fins. In this species, the male latches on to the female and doesn't let go. Their skin fuses and he stays as a permanent pimple with eyes, drinking blood and making sperm."
"To seek out new life and new civilisations...and grill them with a knob of butter and a sprig of parsley. Mmmmmm."
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
I suspect a lot of these fish taste like a catfish from the ultimate of muddy waters. Very earthy. Anything that feeds near a vent probably tastes like rotten eggs from the sulfur.
Not quite right. the temperature may be somewhat constant, but that does not mean that the environment does not change. Think about the influx of nutrients that comes from land, or the amount of oxygen or coarbondioxide that is dissolved in the water. Now pour some changing ocean currents in the mix because the north atlantic and pacific are partially frozen over. That does have some influence doesn't it?
If your argument were right, we'd still be fishing up tribolites.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
What I understood from the various documentaries that I've seen is that nutrients from above do not play a very large role in the food circulation in the deep sea. And the watertemperature in the deep sea is always 4 degrees C because water has its highest density at that temperature. But I'm as much a layman in these matters as the next person I must admit.
-- Cheers!
There's a popular tourist/holiday spot up north in NZ called the Bay of Islands. One of the most popular towns is Paihia. There's a small aquarium on the main strip, which contains only sea creatures that were found in the local region.
My wife and I went in there one day, and as we walked through the front door a very nice chap introduced himself, said he was the owner, and to feel free to ask him any questions we might have. We started walking around, and soon decided we wanted some more information about a particular fish, so asked him, and he obligingly answered our question. He then followed up by telling us, "By the way, that fish is also quite tasty to eat. You want to cook him up with just a splash of lemon juice, and he'll be beautiful". He then started pointing out other fish in that tank, telling us which were no good to eat and exactly how to cook the ones which were good to eat.
That guy very kindly gave us a full guided tour of the whole aquarium (it was a slow day) -- including his own personal cooking suggestions for every single tank in the place.
Photophores originated from colonies of phosphorent bacteria that were living in the fish. This eventually evolved into a differentiated tissue that was light-emitting.
The optical mechanism of these photophores can be quite complex too - it is expensive (metabolically) to turn the light on and off so iris-like shutters have evolved for some species...
I was thinking the same thing. I saw a bunch of guys showing the "things" they killed.
I would have much rather seen images of them in their habitat. Creatures from the deep sea just do not look the same dead and surfaced. They're flat, discolored, etc... have you ever seen a squid laying on the floor of a boat? It's jelly body look like a blob, not the magnificant creature it "was" swimming in it's habitat, so I'm not sure why showing us images of dead deep sea creatures was the preferred method of display here. I'm sure there were some great underwater shots of the same creatures...right?
I watch those deep sea exploration shows and they will find 2-3 new species of sea creature every dive. They say that the deep sea has more species of animals undiscovered than all known species to date, terrestrial life included. We know more about space, and the planets in the solar system than we do about life in the deep sea.
It's all very cool stuff.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Take a look at this friendly little sample and ask yourself where H.R.Giger really got his inspiration for our friends, the aliens, in the Aliens movies series.
Is it just me, or does the Anemone Hermit Crab shown in the second picture on this page look rather like an immature form of the Alien Face Hugger? Obviously H. R. Giger is a Tasmanian marine biologist in his spare time...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
--I would love to see photographs of these animals underwater as much as the next fellow, but it doesnt sound as if they are equipped with anything but trawling equipment. From what I gathered of the article their camera merely rides on a trawl line and records what is more or less beneath it. Also consider that with collected specimens you are able to obtain much data, including a clear idea of how the creature looks, that isn't reasonably possible taking photographs in pitch blackness at 1500 meters
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
"When the squid is hanging at a 45 angle, all the light organs aim down and produce just enough light to cancel out the silhouette of the squid against the weak light from the surface above. They can even adjust the lights for different depths or time of day."
Scroll down for the picture of a Jewel Squid.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I'd say the odds are against us.
I used to know a guy who lived in Guam who told me about some of the scary stuff locals would find in trawlers. Most were tiny fish, but a few were big enough to give a trout a run for its money. One of the stories he used to tell me:
And now, neither will I. He also said some people he grew up with caught a deep sea ribbon fish (oarfish?) that was over 40 feet long. He said he didn't care what anyone said, that thing was a sea serpent if he ever saw one.Not just the oceans, either. Biologists are only able to identify something on the order of 70% of the fish sold in markets near the mouth of the Amazon.
"I think we should tax people who stand in water! " - Mr. Gumby
No, all creatures have had the same time to evolve. On Earth, that time is estimated to be 4.5 billion years.
Some creatures may have experienced a lot of change during the period, and others relatively little, but we've all been evolving for the same amount of time, my friend.
That's not entirely true. Reptiles have been around much longer than mammals and so have had more time to evolve. Many types of creatures that have lived in the Earth are now extinct. So not all types of animals have had the same time to evolve. On the surface of the planet evolution is hampered by mayor disasters every few million years so the creatures living there have less chance to reach a high level of specialization than those deep sea fish in my opinion.
-- Cheers!