A three-inch long Lyssianasid amphipod found 600 feet beneath the Ross Ice Shelf stars in a recent popular webcast (see below). NASA scientists were using a borehole camera to look back up towards the ice surface when they spotted this pinkish-orange creature swimming beneath the ice.
Stacy Kim of Moss Landing Marine Laboratory was the first biologist to see the video and immediately recognized it as a Lyssianasid amphipod. It was about 3 inches long and Stacy concluded that this meant there was quite an extensive biological community under the ice here – even 20 miles from open water.
the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) used a piece of software called “T rex”, which operates in a similar way to the software used to control Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rovers – helping them to avoid obstacles on the surface of the Red Planet.
One main difference between the two pieces of software is that for the Mars rovers, the software ran in the control centre on Earth. With this marine vehicle, it runs onboard the robotic vehicle.
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“We tell it, ‘here’s the range of tasks that we want you to perform’, and it goes off and assesses what is happening in the ocean, making decisions about how much of the range it will cover to get back the data we want.”
Researchers at MBARI used the Gulper AUV to monitor potentially harmful algal blooms.
Kim Fulton-Bennett from MBARI explained: “We used to send out a ship for a full day every few weeks to manually take these measurements. Now we just take the AUV outside the harbour and send it on its way.
“About 24 hours later, it comes back, we hoist it on board, and download the data.”
A pod of bottle-nose dolphins off the coast of Florida have developed a hunting technique unknown in other dolphins. One swims in a circle stirring up mud and then the dolphins wait to catch fish that jump out of the water to escape the contracting circle of muddy water.
The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, none of the plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the untouched stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.
But the action the Environment Agency is about to take is upsetting those who rely on the eel for their livelihoods. A ban on exporting eels out of Europe – they are a popular dish in the far east – is proposed, along with a plan to severely limit the fishing season and the number of people who will be allowed licences.
It seems pretty obvious we have over-fished the oceans. Without effective regulation we will destroy the future of both the wildlife and our food source.
The eel remains one of the world’s most mysterious creatures. It is generally accepted that European eels – Anguilla anguilla – are born in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda.
As leaf-like larvae, they are swept by the Gulf Stream towards Europe, a journey that may take a year. When the larvae reach the continental shelf they change into “glass eels” and in the spring begin to move through estuaries and into freshwater.
The animals develop pigmentation, at which point they are known as elvers and are similar in shape to the adult eel. Elvers continue to move upstream and again change colour to become brown or yellow eels.
When the fish reach full maturity – some can live to 40 and grow to 1m long – they migrate back to the ocean. Females are reported to carry as many as 10m eggs. They return to the Sargasso Sea, spawn and die.
Do you ever wonder what is on the exact opposite side of Earth? This website uses Google Maps to let you see: Antipodes Map. It also makes clear how much of the earth is covered in oceans. The entire continental USA is opposite ocean. Hawaii is opposite Botswana and Namibia. Hong Kong is opposite Argentina. Singapore opposite Ecuador. India, Ireland, Turkey, France and Egypt are among the many countries that opposite oceans. Madrid is opposite New Zealand.
Palau’s marine-lake jellyfish actually diverged very quickly from their common ancestor, the spotted jellyfish. Like other jellyfish, the spotted jellies are cnidarians, a scientific grouping that includes reef-building corals. The spotted jellyfish drift in Palau’s lagoon, zapping the occasional zooplankton with their stinging nettles and absorbing the sugary by-products of photosynthesizing algae living in their tissues.
Like many jelly species, the spotted jellyfish has a multi-stage life cycle. Adult males and females with the familiar bell-shaped bodies are called medusae, but you would not recognize very young jellyfish as jellyfish at all. After medusae release eggs and sperm into the water, fertilized eggs hatch as larvae that drift for a few days before attaching to solid objects, such as rocks. The larvae morph into polyps resembling tiny anemones. Polyps can bud off into more polyps or, when conditions are right, into new young medusae.
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the jellyfish do not “eat” algae. Like their lagoon ancestors, the jellyfish simply absorb their algae’s photosynthetic leftovers. The jellies get about three-fourths of their energy from algal excretions and the remainder from prey. In essence, the jellyfish are landlords that hunt a bit on the side.
The jellyfish-algae partnership did not originate in the lakes, either. Ancestral spotted jellyfish brought the arrangement with them. “Spotted jellyfish in the lagoon have basic behaviors that help ‘sun’ their algae,” Martin explains. “They move eastward in the morning. The lake jellies have adapted this migration to each individual lake. The most spectacular migration is in Jellyfish Lake.”
The jellies’ migration delicately balances time in the sun (to benefit their algae) and predator avoidance. The gelatinous masses of peanut-shaped Jellyfish Lake begin their day in the western basin. As the sun rises they pulsate eastward toward the rising sun—but not too far east, because the lakeshore is covered with jellyfish-eating anemones. The jellies stop swimming east when they hit the shade cast by mangrove trees lining the shore.
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At nightfall the jellies switch to a vertical migration. Jellyfish Lake reaches depths of 100 feet, but only the top 45 feet contain oxygen. The bottom is a toxic vat of hydrogen sulfide. Bacteria do a brisk business at the interface, metabolizing both the oxygen above and hydrogen sulfide below. Every night the jellies bob up and down from the surface to the bacterial layer. Besides helping the jellyfish stay in place, dipping down treats the jellies’ algae to a midnight snack of nutrients excreted by the microbial masses.
That is a pretty awesome fish. The eyes were believed to be fixed in place and seemed to provide only a “tunnel-vision” view of whatever was directly above the fish’s head. A new paper by Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler shows that these unusual eyes can rotate within a transparent shield that covers the fish’s head. This allows the barreleye to peer up at potential prey or focus forward to see what it is eating.
Deep-sea fish have adapted to their pitch-black environment in a variety of amazing ways. Several species of deep-water fishes in the family Opisthoproctidae are called “barreleyes” because their eyes are tubular in shape. Barreleyes typically live near the depth where sunlight from the surface fades to complete blackness. They use their ultra-sensitive tubular eyes to search for the faint silhouettes of prey overhead.
“Octopuses,” Miss Pronk said, “are very smart. I have seen my octopuses open Vegemite jars by unscrewing the lid. They can find their way through mazes to reach food rewards at the end. “And they can learn simple puzzles”, recognising that symbols, such as squares or circles, mean food is available.
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When the crab movie was screened “they jetted straight over to the monitor and tried to attack it”, she said, adding that was strong evidence they knew they were watching food.
When the octopus movie was screened some became aggressive while others changed their skin camouflage or “would go and hide in a corner, moving as far away as possible”.
On viewing the swinging bottle, some puffed themselves up, just in case the object was a threat, while others paid no attention.
But significantly, when the experiment was repeated over several days, she found no consistent response from any octopus. Such random responses implied octopuses have no individual personalities.
She suspected previous efforts to show movies to octopuses failed because their sophisticated eyes were too fast for the 24-frame per second format of standard-definition video.
Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed. It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.
A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily. Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.
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It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.
Earlier this year, the same line was damaged in the same area – off the Egyptian coast – although only two lines were snapped then. “We’ve lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we’re looking at a total blackout in the Middle East,” said Mr Wright.
“These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we’re going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet,” he added.
“Normally you would expect to see one major break per cable per year. With four you should have an insurance policy. For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern.”
