Hi!

[montereybayaquarium]

Why are jellyfish important? Why do they wash up on beaches? And most importantly—can you call them “jellyfish”?! Aquarist extraordinaire Mackenzie answers all those questions and more in “Jellies 101—The Basics!”

[montereybayaquarium]

Thank you, Betty, for your boundless passion for wildlife and for your loving support of the Aquarium’s mission of ocean conservation since day one. We look forward to continuing your legacy of care and compassion for our living planet—we’re grateful to have been a part of your wonderful life.

[montereybayaquarium]

Confronted with the silent darkness of the infinite sea, a lonely caprellid amphipod rears up and cries out to the vast nothing: “WHY, COD!? WHY MUST I BEAR THE CURSÉD NAME ‘SKELETON SHRIMP’ WHEN I HAVE NEITHER THE FORMER NOR AM I THE LATTER!?”

[tiktokmuseum]

he was in the fridge!!!

[myusersnamegoeshere]

ovbiously this person has done so much research and cares about their tortoise so much but.... the mf idea of having a live tortoise in a TUPPERWARE?! IN MY FRIDGE?? WITH ME FOOD? ahahahaha

[rattle-my-stars]

the concept of opening someone else’s fridge only to find a WHOLE ASS TORTOISE in there... idk if I’d ever recover

[blog-carmex]

@esperantoauthor when the food doesn’t come to Tesla, Tesla comes to the food

[esperantoauthor]

Reminds me of when I accidentally stumbled across this photo for the first time...

[marraphy]

mutuals put me in your fridge

[gallusrostromegalus]

Back in 2015, I went over to a classmate's house for group project work late in the fall, and in the middle of working on the presentation, offered to grab sodas for people but they were out of pepsi and Andrew whose house we were at said "Oh, there's more in the basement fridge."

So I go down to the basement, which is well-lit and finished and indeed there are more pepsi but also in the fridge is a massive tortise. This animal was the dimensions of a desktop computer and probably outweighed a labrador. It's not moving, and is set in the middle of a plastic tray so it's apparently supposed to be there. I go back upstairs.

"Hey Andrew." I say, nonchalantly. "So is the tortise in the fridge down there for soup or what?"

"The what?" says the other member of the group project. I don't remember her name, just that she always wore her hair in pigtails with butterfly clips that were based on real butterflies and she had at least a dozen species.

"Oh! No, that's Andrew Too." he says. "His species hibernates so he stays in the fridge for the holidays."

"You named your tortise after you?" I ask.

"No, uh- Well, my grandfather got him in Egypt or somewhere while he was on leave during the war and He was named Andrew, so he thought it would be funny to name him 'Andrew Too'. ...Then Mom named me after him so Gandpa left me Andrew Too in his will. He's pretty cool when he's awake. Lets us dress him up for summer holidays, doesn't bark."

"Oh!" Said Butterflies. "My dad served in the Gulf War too! What unit was he in?"

"Oh no, Grandpa was with the Royal Air Force in World War Two. Andrew Too is going to be 70 this year! We're going to make him a carrot cake!"

[alphacrone]

i feel like everyone’s forgotten some Covid basics so please let me remind you:

Your mask protects others more than it protects you

You can still spread covid even if you’re vaccinated or not showing any symptoms

The more this spreads around, the more mutated variants of the virus will appear and they WILL be stronger than the original

so like maybe stop being a little bitch and endangering others because you really, really needed to go out to dinner or get fucked up at a bar instead of in your home like a respectable person

[alphacrone]

[montereybayaquarium]

It’s been one year since the Aquarium shut down to help slow the spread of COVID-19—one year of empty halls, quiet exhibits and endless Zoom calls. But during this time and until our doors are open again, we simply remember Aquarium things, and then we don’t feel so sad:

[youareyoubutwhoareyou]

Hey if u like the ocean look at this its rly cool I think

[mbari-blog]

A new paper describes how researchers at MBARI, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UH Mānoa), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution enabled a trio of self-driving robots to locate, follow, and sample a layer of oceanic microbes in an eddy north of the Hawaiian islands.

Open-ocean eddies can be over 100 kilometers (62 miles) across and last for months. Phytoplankton thrive when these eddies spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and bring nutrient-rich water from the depths up toward the surface. (Photo by Thom Hoffman/courtesy of Schmidt Ocean Institute.)

Typically, researchers might lower a single sampling device into the eddy to take a snapshot of microbial activity. But the team of three robots autonomously working together were able to locate, sample, and follow along with the microbes as they drifted in the ocean currents. Each robot had a specific job—act like a spy on the microbes in the layer, profile the surrounding water column, or communicate with the humans on a nearby ship.

In a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is reducing opportunities for researchers to go to sea, autonomous fleets offer an effective way to observe complex systems in new ways. Read more.  

[destinyrush]

[sassystarlightcollection-deacti]

Lmao all of the moods

[demumbridge-deactivated20200301]

why is this so fucking funny

[whitepeopletwitter]

[animatedpixie]

Jack Frost: *lighty knocking on a bright pumpkin door* you ready bones?

Jack Skeleton: *opens the door* Mhm? Oh? Jack Frost? Is that you? What’s going on?

Jack Frost: Eh North told me to get y’all ready for Halloween *he glances up as he lays his staff over his shoulders*

Jack Skeleton: but.. it couldn’t be time yet?hadn’t New Years just happened?

Jack Frost: oh right.. I forgot you aren’t allowed outside considering what you did to North a few years ago..

Jack Skeleton: What did you say Boy?

Jack Frost: Oh nothing! Just.. well it’s not New Years anymore.. it’s just about to turn to  October

Jack Skeleton: well surely we have more time

Jack Frost: wellll *he crinkled his face* you may need more time this year.. y’all still have to plan how to deal with trick-or-treating and making sure they all have masks and.. *he starts to go off on a rant, holding his fingers up and listing off things, looking at the bright moon*

Jack Skeleton: woah slow down Frost *he raises his hands* what is all of this?

Jack Frost: Oh *he turns his attention back to the skeleton as he tilts his head* guess I should explain huh.. let’s just start off by saying. 2020 is the worse year yet.. a huge pandemic has been going on the guardians need to make sure children are safe with every holiday this year.. it hasn’t been easy.. Bunny had a hard time with Easter and.. *he trails off and his eyes slowly widen* wait.. did we even do Easter this year? *he calls out*

Jack Skeleton: Jack! For the love! Would you stay focus!

Jack Frost: *he quickly throws frozen clipboard made from ice* that’s the list of things that need to be done! I have to go check on Bunny! *he throws himself up and leaves with the wind*

Jack Skeleton: *blinks and stares at the clipboard* “people must be six feet apart” *he reads* what?

(Enjoy this random little interaction I imagine happening, This was inspired by the fact I can’t remember what I did for Easter, heck I can’t remember much from this year at all. I mostly started blocking stuff from my memory. I have yet to decide if that’s good or bad 😂😅)

[kedreeva]

So, yesterday, a friend of mine visited for a bonfire, and he asked me to come look at something weird on his car. In the seam of the door, there were 4 little mud cocoons. I crumbled the first one on accident (it was empty), but the second one came off cleanly- but it was empty, too. I took a photo of them to see if I could get an ID later, and then I pulled off the third one- empty.

The 4th one though. The 4th one… something had Happened.

It looks like a spider, but I couldn’t think of any spider that would live in our area that makes cocoons like this, and the cocoon really looked like something a wasp or a bee would do, so I was stumped!

TURNS OUT. Michigan has a really beautiful little wasp called a blue mud dauber, and their MO is to sting spiders, shove them into mud cocoons, lay an egg on it, and close the lid.

(source)

But the REAL kicker here, is that their FAVORITE spider, the one they are most well known for using…. is the black widow. These docile little nectar-eaters know how to snatch them right out of their webs or lure them off of their webs in order to sting them to use as baby food. So NOT ONLY are these things Friends, and beautiful as heck, but they are complete badasses too. I have seen them around here and there over the years, but I never thought to wonder what they might be doing. I’m glad to find out!

[montereybayaquarium]

“Wait, who are you calling ‘poor unfortunate soles?!'”  - A garden eel watching The Little Mermaid

[refinery29]

Watch: “Flying While Fat” is the short documentary on YouTube you NEED to watch showing what plus size people go through when they travel by air

If the plane doesn’t physically accommodate your body type, flying can turn from an uncomfortable experience into a humiliating one. That’s why London-based artist Stacy Bias made the new documentary Flying While Fat: to get to the heart of just how pervasive people’s fat phobia on planes is.

Gifs: Stacy Bias

WATCH THE VIDEO

[jaune-chat]

The last time I flew (2018), it was not pleasant. I luckily flew with my husband, who is average in size, so he could sit between me and anyone else. I needed that seatbelt extender. Even if someone’s seat was fully upright, I couldn’t quite fold the tray all the way down. If someone reclined their seat, I nearly couldn’t breathe. I could barely move my legs six inches back and forth, and had to keep my purse against the window or I couldn’t have accessed it during the eight-hour flight. I was uncomfortably hot the whole flight even with the airflow up to max, and was desperately trying not to sweat too hard. My clothes were damp all the way through despite trying to dress to account for everything. I’m not terribly claustrophobic, but I nearly had a small panic attack because I could. not. move.

The trip back we paid an extra $200 to get bulkhead seats that had no one in front of us and some actual room to wiggle a little. That was marginally better. And still I am not likely to fly again unless the need is absolutely dire.

[probablyasocialecologist]

[montereybayaquarium]

Staffer Ann supplies scrumptious sharky snacks to our sevengills for supper and for science! 

Our largest sharks at the Aquarium are only temporary visitors here—by diving in and feeding each shark individually, we can keep track of their diet to monitor their health, and also learn more about their life histories before they return to the wild!

[montereybayaquarium]

It takes a lot of TLC to care for these LTCs: Large Toothy Critters! Fortunately, Aquarist Ann is the best shark mom around 🦈❤️

Dive in with Ann and her buddy Kelsey as they hop into our sharkiest exhibit to feed a few of our residents! 

[montereybayaquarium]

Reposting this video from a few years ago because Aquarist Ann is still an epic shark mom and also because we should have called it TLSea the whole time

[lessthanagodmorethanaman]

mermanateemaid