not actually daily

[deep-sea-daily]

acorn worm gallery!!

dsd #5

that last picture is the actual long-eared yoda acorn worm. the rosy acorn worm is also named after yoda, but is a different species. sorry for the misinfo but it's fixed now.

[deep-sea-daily]

Rosy acorn worm- Yoda purpurata

dsd #4

acorn worms have a stunning range: from the shoreline down to 8100m, all around the world. they dwell at the seafloor and eat marine snow, which is dead organic material from above. this connects them to the carbon cycle and gives them an important job redistributing carbon from dead things above to the seabed. I couldn't find much information about this acorn worm specifically, but I picked it because it has both sex organs and because it's named after Yoda!

[deep-sea-daily]

Vampire squid- Vampyroteuthis infernalis

dsd #3

squids are molluscs, and the vampire squid is a cephalopod. this makes it neither a squid nor a vampire, but the last remaining member of an ancient group of cephalopods! vampire squids hang out 600-900m down, in the mesopelagic midwater, with a particular affinity for the oxygen minimum zone. they can do this because their feeding strategy is so low-effort (they scavenge maring snow, which is what the dead organic material that floats down from above is called), compared to their would-be predators who are too active to survive in low-oxygen. On top of the protection their environment and color affords them (red light doesn't reach the twilight zone), they can also flip inside out (seen in the first picture) to change their appearance and confuse predators, which is referred to in their mbari entry as "moving into the 'pineapple' posture".

[deep-sea-daily]

Angler siphonophore- Erenna sirena

dsd #2

siphonophores are colonies of specialized parts connected in a chain, called zooids individually. this makes siphonophores in general pretty cool, because none of the zooids could survive alone, they all work connected as a whole. they blur the lines between colonial creatures (like coral) and independent creatures. The angler siphonophore specifically is special because it's one of only two creatures found to produce red bioluminescence, found in its lures! (the other being the scaleless dragonfish). angler siphonophores float in the midwater at depths of 1600-2400 meters. they capture prey by luring and incapacitating it with the sting of their tentacles. you can see the resemblance to jellyfish, and indeed, jellies and siphonophores are closely related!

[deep-sea-daily]

Grideye Fish (Ipnops meadi)

dsd #1

instead of normal fish eyes who see with ocular lenses, grideyes have photosensitive bony membranes! technically there are three ipnops species, but they look pretty much the same, only separated by geography and depth (I. meadi and I. agasizzi are indo-pacific, I. murrayi are atlantic and carribean. I. meadi is found 3000-3500 meters, the other two are at 3000 and above). there is very little known about them, including why their eyes are like that. Interestingly, their larvae live at much higher depths and have actual eyeballs.