TO MOST DIVERS, SEA CUCUMBERS WOULD SEEM LIKE THE INACTION FIGURES of the oceans. Mainly, they come off as inert, sausage-shaped lumps lying randomly on the sandy bottom and perhaps the least interesting objects on the reef. It’s time for real sea cucumber facts. Actually, some of them have real Captain Echinoderm moves in them. For one thing, they’re nocturnal so what you see in the daytime isn’t what you’d get at night, when they
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THE MARKINGS OF THE FISHES AT LEFT AND LOWER RIGHT suggest members of the genus Canthigaster, sharp-nosed puffers often known as toby’s that are found in the Indo-Pacific. But the specific designs and colors are sufficiently different from the familiar black saddled toby (Canthigaster valentini) to suggest they’re not described in any of the references I have access to. CANTHIGASTER POSEIDONSWEBUS But there are a lot of fishes in the sea, so to speak, and
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THE ESTIMABLE FOLKS AT THE MONTERREY BAY AQUARIUM RESEARCH INSTITUTE are celebrating their success at breeding the comb jelly Leucothea pulchra with a video chowing off its otherworldly, pulsating beauty. As a comb jelly, L. pulchra (whose Latin name means “beautiful sea goddess”) is more properly known as a ctenophore, a gelatinous sea creature somewhat resembling a jellyfish. CTENOPHORES VERSUS JELLIES Unlike with your basic jelly, ctenophores don’t sting. Instead, they have sticky tentacles that trail
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FINDING A FRIENDLY OCTOPUS ON YOUR PHOTO SHOOT DIVE IS A RARE JOY. Sony Corporation and Kelly Tarlton’s SEA LIFE Aquarium in Auckland, New Zealand, turned the tables. The concept: An octopus takes photos of people. The octopus is Rambo, so named because he wrecked two camera systems in the course of the training. RAMBO RULES Of course, the concept in which an octopus takes photos of people is a long-running performance art commercial for Sony’s TX30 camera,
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Holdfast (hohld’-fast) In marine biology terms, structures with which sessile organisms’ such as kelp attach themselves to a solid substrate. Sessile (ses’-il, -ahy) Permanently attached by the base, not able to move about. Substrate (suhb’-streyt) A surface that serves as a base for a sessile marine organism. As in, “a larva looks for a substrate on which to settle.” Stipe (stahyp’) The stem of an algae organism, most often used with reference to larger varieties
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HORSESHOE CRABS ARE “LIVING FOSSILS,” a group of animals that have been on Earth since before the dinosaurs. Beside being intriguing members of the web of life in their own right – they’re not actually crabs, but four species in a far different arthropod family – they immensely benefit us all. BLOOD WILL TELL Their bluish, coppery blood is regularly harvested for a unique clotting agent that is used to test for bacterial contamination during the production
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SNAPPING SHRIMP SNAP THEIR CLAWS with speeds so fast they create shockwaves in the water (cavitation bubbles, in scientific parley) that implode with immense energy, resulting in those cracking sounds. How the little guys do it wasn’t clear. Now a team of scientists has used micro-computed tomography, high-speed video and 3-D printed scale models to figure it out. NEW CLAW DYNAMICS Analyzing the claw dynamics of 114 species of shrimps, they found two previously unrecognized
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EVERYBODY RAVES ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF CHRISTMAS TREE WORMS (Spirobranchus giganteus), with their fantastic arrays of bright colors and shapes like perfect fir trees. The wormy bodies behind the gorgeous finery, maybe not so much. The spiraling crowns we see are specialized tentacles, called radioles, that filter plankton from the surrounding waters for food, passing it down to the worm’s mouth in cilia-lined grooves. They also work like “gills” to let the animals absorb oxygen.
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WHO KNEW? DECORATOR CRABS use a sort of crustacean Velcro to attach stuff to their bodies, as explained in this video –“Decorator Crabs Make High Fashion at Low Tide” – by the terrific PBS project Deep Look.
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NOT THE ONES ON YOUR DINNER TABLE (presumably). But scallops you might be eyeing during a dive may well be looking back at you, possibly contemplating an escape with a sort of jet propulsion created by clapping their shells together. And, they see through as many as 200 grain-sized, complex eyes located at the tips of tentacles extended past their shells, each resembling the structure of a reflecting telescope with a tiny concave mirror. “WHAT”
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