Valleys and Troughs

Horrible things lurking at the bottom of the ocean filmed, for whatever reason.

That's an oarfish, and lucky for the clowns in the picture, it's a dead one. Up until now this is the only way these things have been seen, either washed up on shore or floating belly-up in the waves. But scientists working in the Gulf of Mexico have captured what is believed to be the first footage of the oarfish, which can reach lengths of 17 meters - that's 55 feet to us non-metric users; go ahead, do the math - alive and in its natural habitat. Namely, the bottom of the ocean. The footage was recorded by a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, under the direction of Mark Benfield of Louisiana State University working in conjunction with, of all people, a group of oil companies "such as BP, Shell, Chevron and Petrobras working in the Gulf of Mexico." Filming in the vicinity of an offshore oil platform, Benfield caught footage of the oarfish purely by chance:

"We saw this bright vertical shiny thing, I said 'are they lowering more riser?' as it looked like they were lowering a huge pipe."
"We zoomed in a little bit and we said 'that's not a riser that's a fish!'"
"As we approached it retreated downwards swimming tail first in a vertical orientation as the ROV followed," Professor Benfield explained.

The BBC has the story as well as the video, which might as well be the inside of somebody's fish tank, as clear as it is. Still, we can't help but be moved, and not in a pleasant way, by a development such as this. We've always been wary of what lies hidden in the murky depths of " target="_blank">the ocean, and the knowledge that fifty-foot fish that "provided the basis for the sea serpent myths told by early ocean travellers" are swimming around down there doesn't exactly set our minds at ease. For more along these lines, see this chart, also by BBC, illustrating the various monstrosities populating the seafloor or "beyond the abyss," as they choose to call it. Keep an eye out for favorites like the hairy angler, below:

Yeah. Pretty much the stuff of nightmares. As always, we will think long and hard before we step foot into that ocean again.

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Dolphins second only to humans in intelligence, for all the good it does them.

One place we've never felt remotely comfortable is the ocean - we've spoken about this several times - but one thing that's always assuaged our fears of the deep blue sea is the implicit alliance that has always existed between man and dolphin. And according to new research, our faith in our hairless marine counterparts may be well-justified:

New MRI scans show that dolphin brains are four to five times larger for their body size when compared to another animal of similar size, according to Lori Marino, a senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University, and one of the world's leading dolphin experts. Humans also possess an impressive brain-to-body ratio.

Marino admits that "size isn't everything," naturally, but points to the complexity of the dolphin neocortex and the exhibition of human-like ability to learn as indications of substantial brainpower. And just to ruin everyone's good times, she points out that "scientific evidence on dolphin sensitivities reveals that they are vulnerable to trauma and suffering when forced to live in the confined context of marine parks." So once again science has taken away something we love and replaced it with guilt and shame. And we wonder why people would rather watch Jersey Shore than read Science Magazine. They both make us feel bad about ourselves, but at least one of them is entertaining.

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via Discovery News

World needs to start worrying about Octopuses now, too.

We always keep a wary eye on the animal kingdom, especially that enormous portion of it that dwells in the murky depths of the sea. If there is a place on earth from which our doom will come, we feel pretty confident that it'll be the bottom of the ocean. Especially when Octopuses begin to use tools:

Humans living on the Indonesian coast frequently discard halved coconut shells in the ocean, and it turns out that their eight-legged neighbors have been making use of them. Researchers have filmed veined octopi, Amphioctopus marginatus, moving the shell halves by placing their bodies inside the hollowed-out portion, draping their legs over the edges, and bringing the shells along for the ride. When the coconut-carrying octopus feels threatened, it will pull the half shell over its body (or sometimes pulls two halves of a whole coconut over itself), and wait inside their armored home until the threat passes.

This is the first time that researchers have observed tool-use in an invertebrate species, or so the internets tell us, and we're inclined to believe them. This may seem like a trivial development, but bear in mind that it wasn't so long ago on the evolutionary timeline that we ourselves were hitting each other over the heads with rocks and probably using coconut-halves for body armor. Coupled with dolphins evolving opposable thumbs, we feel safe in saying that it is never too early to panic.

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via io9

UPDATE: killer seals real, more or less.

Last week we brought to your attention a story from Russia involving that nation's attempt to catch up with the U.S. in the pivotally important marine-mammal arms race. Really. Gennady Matishov, director of the Murmansk Marine Biology Institute in northern Russia, explained his country's desire to match America's prowess in the intricate dance that is dropping seals out of helicopters. This story was certain to raise a lot of eyebrows, ours especially, and thanks to some good old-fashioned investigative reporting by the folks at NPR, we have some answers:

"It is true that the U.S. military does employ teams of dolphins and sea lions," Noah Shachtman says. He's an editor for Wired Magazine and runs its military technology blog, "Danger Room."

They take on two roles, Shachtman says. "One is to look for underwater mines, and the other is that marine mammals are used to patrol certain U.S. bases to watch out for the very unlikely event of a terrorist swimmer attack."

Looking for underwater mines? The very unlikely event of a terrorist swimmer attack? Something's not adding up here. The Russians claim they have a seal that can incapacitate or even kill an enemy diver, and we're owning up to having dolphins with cameras strapped to their fins?

Impressive, to be sure. but we're not willing to be duped here. This thing has its roots in the Cold War, and those roots stretch deep into the danger and mystique lurking among the alien depths of the ocean floor. Something tells us it will be a long time before we have any real answers, but that doesn't mean we'll stop searching. Somewhere out there, somebody knows the truth.

And lest you think the convergence of sea animals and helicopters a trifling matter, we present you with maybe the least-thrilling action sequence ever filmed. At least it has inspired us to always be carrying shark-repellant Batspray:

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Abysmal bone-worms feed only on whalebone, forever.

The possibilities of what lies in the seemingly infinite blackness of the bottom of the ocean mystifies - and even terrifies - many of us (more than you might think). The above image is of the recently-discovered yellow-collared worm, which feeds solely on the decaying skeletons of dead whales. This may seem pretty trivial, but it turns out that whale carcasses support an entire ecosystem - and can do so for twenty years:

Once flesh-eaters like hagfish and sharks have picked clean a whale's skeleton, the 0.8-inch-long (2-centimeter-long) worms go to work, said zoologist Helena Wiklund, a member of the University of Gothenburg team behind the study.

Generations of worms "could be there for maybe 20 years depending on how big the whale was," Wiklund added. "Bones from a big whale last really long on the seafloor."

Pretty fascinating stuff. The deepest part of the ocean is 35,850 ft. That's a mile more than the height of Everest, which just really boggles the mind. So far researchers have found these worms at depths up to 9,842 ft., which is still pretty staggering, and one can imagine that there's all sorts of other stuff happening down there that we can't even begin to wrap our heads around. Still, there's something sort of peaceful, poetic really we find, about imagining an entire circle of life that revolves around the slow detrital disintegration by miniscule creatures of the largest animals on earth, all on the ghostly stretches of the ocean floor. The wheel truly comes full circle.

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via National Geographic here and here.

Of microscopic water fleas and their weird eyes.

The winning entry in the 2009 BioScapes microscopic image contest, the above is a close-up of a water flea. A highlight of the image, apparently, is the "snaking ridge" along the top left, a growth known as the "crown of thorns."

If water flea parents sense that their habitat is shared by their main predators, tadpole shrimp, the flea offspring sport these pointy crowns--which are unappetizing to the shrimp.

Zoologist Jan Michels, of the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany, added a dye to reveal the tiny animal's exoskeleton (green) and cellular nuclei (blue smudges). The blue-and-red dots are one of the animal's compound eyes, like those of a fly.

Pretty compelling stuff. The image placed first out of more than 2,000 entries, good for $5,000 worth of Olympus camera equipment and bragging rights in a very small if earnest circle. Hey, we're fascinated by it, and we like to think our tastes are fairly discerning when it comes to this sort of thing. You know, microscopic images of the kind of thing with which one might prefer not to be intimately acquainted.

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via NationalGeographic