the ocean is scary @deepsea-official - Tumblr Blog

not to brag about my personal success but while you were trying to "climb the corporate ladder" i just made it into the "top 10 strangest things washed up from the ocean depths" list for the fifth year in a row

snickeringdragon

we as a society do not talk about oarfish enough, like why the fuck are they that long??????

oarfjsh

thats none of your business

badassdemonsword

ANYONE ELSE IN THE BENTHIC ZONE INDULGING ON SOME DETRITUS THIS AFTERNOON

puppetshell

phocids

im collecting marine biology memes does anyone have anymore

amygdalae

idk who needs to hear this today but under the ocean there live many chitinous creatures and if you manage to get past their defenses you’ll find so much succulent meat inside

#oh no #w

metalgearsolid2

prokopetz

Giant isopods are awesome because most deep-sea organisms get all kinds of fucked up when exposed to surface pressures and temperatures, but if you drag a giant isopod up from 1.3 miles below sea level it just looks at you like “dude”.

#you'd look at someone like 'dude' if you got trawled out of your bed and into the lower atmosphere

marinebiologyshitposts

romance

marinebiologyshitposts

guerrillatech

32degrees-deactivated20210303

those fucked animals in the ocean don’t give a damn about me or you

#rood

unlimited-shitpost-works-deacti

A new bill threatens to kill encryption. If passed, the EARN IT Act would give Attorney General Willliam Barr the power to demand that tech

electricity-official

Black Lives Matter.

Beyond anything else right now, I believe that we need to protect ourselves and eachother.

And among the best, newest, and at the moment most difficult to resist and shut down thing we can do is record and post what we can of abuses, of the atrocities and horrific things that have occurred.

And this bill would take all of that and throw it away. The State, the one right now that we don’t trust to do jack shit, would now just be able to arbitrate what can and can’t be said, posted, etc. on the internet.

That’s bullshit.

oh! just a reminder, though we here in the very bottom of the ocean have been on a bit of a hiatus, we want to raise our voice to say that Black Lives Matter!

moonpaw

its all fun and games until you realize oarfish are real

aconstantstateofbladerunner

Real-life sea serpents

#fukc yeah

alphynix

Weird Heads Month #31: What Even Is This Fish

For the final entry in this series, let’s take a look at a modern weird-headed species – and where better to find some of the strangest and most unique-looking animals alive today than the deep sea?

Malacosteus, also known as the stoplight loosejaw, is a 25cm long (10") genus of dragonfish found at depths of over 500m (1640’) in oceans all around the world, with the exception of the Mediterranean and polar waters. Two different species are currently recognized, with Malacosteus niger here known from just below the Arctic Circle down to the southern reaches of the subtropics, and Malacosteus australis ranging from there to around 45°S, and up towards the equator in the Indian Ocean.

And there’s a lot to unpack here with the anatomy of this one.

First of all, there’s the fact that its entire head can hinge away from its body, gaping enormous jaws with long fang-like teeth.

The bottom of its lower jaw has no skin membrane connecting the two sides, attached to the rest of its bizarre head only by the hinges and a single exposed muscle, reducing water resistance so it can shoot its trap-jaws out extra fast to snare prey.

From Kenaley, C. P. (2012). Exploring feeding behaviour in deep-sea dragonfishes (Teleostei: Stomiidae): jaw biomechanics and functional significance of a loosejaw. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 106(1), 224-240. doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2012.01854.x

Once it catches something it retracts its head, and several sets of pharyngeal teeth further back grab hold of its prey and direct it down its throat.

(Let me remind you that this isn’t an early April Fools joke. This thing is completely real.)

In addition to all that anatomical weirdness, it’s also one of the only deep-sea fish that can both see and produce red-colored light. Most creatures living at that depth have lost the ability to see red since that frequency doesn’t penetrate so far down through water, but the stoplight loosejaw has evolved to take advantage of that by using bioluminescent red light as its own personal night vision goggles.

Using large red photophores under each eye, it can shine a spotlight out ahead of itself and see other deep-sea animals all clearly lit up, while remaining completely invisible to both them and any nearby larger predators. It’s able to perceive the color red thanks to a pigment in its eyes modified from chlorophyll, a visual setup unique to this fish and not known from any other vertebrate.

It also has a smaller green photophore further down on its head – inspiring its common name thanks to the resemblance to traffic lights – and many smaller blue and white ones over its head and body.

So, with its highly specialized jaws and ability to see things other deep-sea animals can’t, the stoplight loosejaw must be hunting something pretty impressive, right?

And as it turns out, it eats… plankton.

The vast majority of its diet appears to be copepods, small zooplanktoic crustaceans that are incredibly common in the waters the loosejaw inhabits. It may simply be “snacking” on such a convenient food source in-between rare encounters with larger prey – but it may also be getting the chlorophyll-based pigment needed for its night vision from eating them.