Slow your scroll and spend some quality time with this awesome amphipod. 🤩
With a transparent body, the crystal amphipod, Cystisoma magna, is essentially invisible in the dim waters of the ocean’s twilight zone. Most of their cousins grow no bigger than your fingernail, but the crystal amphipod can fill your entire hand. And unlike many other hyperiids who live life hidden as hitchhikers, crystal amphipods swim freely in the open water. Living out in the open with nowhere to hide requires a different kind of stealth. With the help of MBARI’s ships and deep-sea robots, our researchers and their collaborators revealed the secret to the crystal amphipod’s invisibility. Their exoskeleton is covered in microscopic shaggy structures or a fine coating of biofilm. Tiny spherical bacteria, only nanometers in diameter, work like the anti-reflective coating on eyeglasses to help Cystisoma camouflage in an environment that is sorely lacking in places to hide from hungry predators.
The crystal amphipod faces a fragile future. As industries look to the deep seafloor for mining precious metals, even animals living far above the bottom are at risk. Mining these metals will release plumes of dirty wastewater into the ocean’s twilight zone, clouding the crystal amphipod’s vision and interfering with their invisible superpower.
We urgently need to identify the impacts of deep-sea mining to help resource managers and policymakers guide decision-making about the ocean, its inhabitants, and its resources. Share what you have learned about the remarkable animals of the deep—together, we can be a powerful voice for the ocean. Learn more about these amazing amphipods in our Animals of the Deep gallery.