Awesome marine life videos from the web.
THE MISSION WAS TO STUDY DEEP SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENTS. THE BONUS REWARD WAS MESMERIZING UPSIDE-DOWN DEEP SEA MIRRORS – at least, the illusion of mirrors – under ledges some 6,500 ft/2,000 m under the sea. The Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists on the research vessel Falkor were seeking earlier this year to learn about the life, geology and chemistry of little-explored deep thermal vents in the Gulf of California’s Guatmas Basin. And, using a remotely operated
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WITH FIVE ARMS STRETCHING IN FIVE DIRECTIONS, you’d think that starfish could move along the seafloor like Indiana Jones. In fact, usually they creep along on hundreds of little tube feet that line the undersides of those arms. But, researchers studying how starfish walk found something else: sometimes starfish bounce along for speed. As echinoderms in Class Asteroidea, starfish walk by operating their multitudes of little tiny feet through intricate networks of fluid-filled canals. With
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SQUID CAMOUFLAGE WOULD APPEAR TO BE A TOUGH CHALLENGE. Squids’ cephalopod cousins, like bottom-dwelling octopuses and cuttlefishes, can disappear by blending in with the nearest coral. As free swimmers, squids have to find a way to hide out in the midst of open water. So the question is, how do squids manage their colors to disappear in plain sight? IT’S ALL IN THE IRIDOPHORES As it turns out, as explained by the folks behind PBS’ terrific
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YOUNG WHALES ARE SOMETIMES KNOWN TO WANDER, but a lone, stray narwhal has apparently wandered into a pod of young beluga whales – and stayed. And been accepted as one of the boys. The narwhal – identified by his iconic long tusk and gray-spotted body – has apparently been swimming with the white-bodies belugas in the St. Lawrence River for the past three years. The setting is far south of narwhals’ usual habitat in the
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UNLIKE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE BIVALVE FAMILY, SCALLOPS CAN FLY. And flying scallops make for an amazing sight! Well, actually scallops swim, by jetting along underwater, as shown in this awesome video from East Coast Divers, my old dive shop in Brookline, Mass. NEITHER A BURROWER NOR AN ATTACHER BE Like other bivalves – clams, oysters and mussels – scallops share the basic anatomical structures of other members of Phylum Mollusca. As members of Family
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THE FIRST REASON FOR WATCHING THIS VIDEO OF A FLAMBOYANT CUTTLEFISH stalking a shrimp is that it’s a fascinating view of how cuttlefish hunt and capture their prey. The second is that it’s a flamboyant cuttlefish – that’s its street name – an astoundingly dramatic, colorful creature described as the “flamenco dancer of the cuttlefish world” by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium (MBA), which produced the video. A FRONT-PAGE FEATURE SIDEBAR I get into the characteristics and
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THE PLANKTON IS ONE OF THE KEYSTONES OF THE OCEAN FOOD CHAIN. In fact, it’s one of the most important elements of life in the sea. And, yet, every time I mention the word, seek to talk about plankton, discuss plankton, define plankton, I can hear eyes roll all across Planet Earth. True, plankton doesn’t have the same excitement attached to it as, say, a celebrity punching a shark on You-Know-What Week. On the other hand,
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IT MAY BE EXCITING TO FIND SEAHORSES ON DIVES – but watching them is like watching grass grow. They’re inept swimmers, so they rarely swim unless they have to. But it turns out that seahorses are super-predators, more than 90 percent effective at bagging their prey – mostly tiny shrimp and copepods. WHY SEAHORSES ARE SUPER-PREDATORS – ANATOMY & SPEED One study using high-speed video to record seahorses’ movements found that the seahorse’s curved-body architecture
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SOMETIMES THERE’S NOTHING BETTER THAN A GOOD BACKSCRATCH. Clearly, the same is true for fish. I referenced this video at the end of an earlier post on fish “flashing,” a fishy habit of rubbing fish their bodies on the seafloor, possibly to scrape off parasites, or possibly in search of a good fish backscratch. A FISH BACKSCRATCH WORTH REPOSTING This video is so delightful I decided to post it in its own right. It’s a
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MANTIS SHRIMPS ARE PARTICULARLY AGGRESSIVE CRUSTACEANS with exceptional traits. One is their ability to smash hardshelled prey with lightning strokes. As this awesome Smithsonian Channel video shows, the mantis shrimp punch is perhaps the strongest, fastest left hook in the ocean. The mantis headlines earlier this year focused on their complex eyes and exceptional vision (seethe Poseidon’s Web post How Mantis Shrimps See – With Polarity). Even more impressive – and worrisome to fishermen who may accidentally
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