In the profound darkness of the ocean’s depths, organisms face a choice concerning their visual capabilities. Some species evolve specialized eyes that grow to astonishing sizes, as seen in creatures like the giant squid or owl fish. Alternatively, there’s the option to abandon the concept of eyes altogether. It’s the latter scenario that introduces us to an intriguing case: the “blind lobsters,” a peculiar group of 38 lobster-like crustaceans known as Polychelidae. These creatures exclusively inhabit the deep sea, dwelling at depths exceeding 5,000 meters (16,000 feet). Members of this group typically exhibit either absent or vestigial eyes, along with reduced or entirely absent eye stalks.

However, their lack of eyesight isn’t the most remarkable aspect of these creatures. Unlike typical lobsters, which possess two claws, Polychelids boast up to 5 pairs of claws. They feature two larger claws, followed by four smaller yet equally intimidating ones. The name of the group, “Polycheles,” derives from the Greek words meaning “many-clawed.”

While one might assume scientists are primarily intrigued by the blind, multi-clawed nature of these creatures. But they are complex. Scientists and Poychelids alike.  Polychelid bodies provide evidence of a transition from shrimp-like to lobster-like forms. Despite their lobster-like appearance, they lack certain primitive characteristics, such as a pointed telson (back-end) instead of the rounded telson found in typical lobsters. This appearance is similar to another group of unusual crustaceans, Eryon, dating back to the Jurassic and thus making Polychelids somewhat of a living fossil similar to the Coelacanths.  Yet intriguingly Eryon dwelled in the warm shallow seas of the Jurrassic.  The question of why they migrated to the deep sea remained unanswered—did they seek refuge in these depths, as suggested for other deep-sea taxa? Recent fossil and genetic evidence suggests that they have always inhabited these depths since their evolutionary origins in the middle Jurassic period.

Chang, Su-Ching, Shane T. Ahyong, and Ling-Ming Tsang. “Molecular phylogeny of deep-sea blind lobsters of the family Polychelidae (Decapoda: Polychelida), with implications for the origin and evolution of these “living fossils”.” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 192 (2024): 107998.

Bezerra, Luis Ernesto Arruda, and Felipe Bezerra Ribeiro. “Primitive decapods from the deep sea: first record of blind lobsters (Crustacea: Decapoda: Polychelidae) in northeastern Brazil.” Nauplius 23 (2015): 125-131.

The post The Many Clawed, Blind Lobsters of the Deep first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Schmidt Ocean has posted new 4K video of a suite of amazing organisms from seamounts of the coast of Chile. I, however, strongly feel the video should have been accompanied by Chilean music. So set the Schmidt video to mute and play this instead or go here to this rather busy remix.

The post Seamounts of the Southeast Pacific first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Describing another family is literally another level.  Above the species in the taxonomic pecking order, we have the genus and then the family level.  Introducing a new family requires something truly unique. A case in point is a new creature from the remote depths of the Hikurangi Plateau, off the eastern coast of New Zealand.

The new family called, Basoniscidae for “basal” position in evolution of isopods and because the common word for isopods, wood lice, or sow pugs is “oniscus”. The species is Basoniscus hikurangi and displays features from two distinct families—the shallow water Joeropsididae and the deep-sea Haploniscidae—giving it is basal position.  For as enigmatic deep-sea species, it is rather amorphous.  Unlike its more common counterparts, this broad-bodied, eyeless isopod reveals an intriguing fusion of features typically associated with two different families. The distinctive features of the broad body, thin flat marginal flanges, and minute curved robust “bristles”, coupled with the presence of robust claws on the walking legs – particularly the ventral claw – hint at a fascinating adaptation in these isopods. It is conceivable that these unique characteristics equip them with the ability to tightly cling to surfaces. This behavior is particularly suggestive of an affinity for hard volcanic surfaces, mirroring the conditions from which the specimens were originally collected.

Beyond its taxonomic significance, this discovery sheds light on the underexplored realm of rocky hard substrates in the deep sea. The limited sampling of such substrates highlights a significant and the continued  gap in our understanding of all deep-sea ecosystems.

The post A New Deep-Sea Family of Roly Polies first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Connecting the oceans to land are numerous carbon highways.  These conduits bring food from land to the ocean, supporting an abundance of life.  Our group explores these carbon chains and explores some potential methods of carbon delivery to the deep.  Thus, alligators on the abyss.

At first it may seem fanciful that an alligator carcass might find its way to the deep.  However, dozens of species of alligators and crocodiles are found across the globe, in high numbers, and often in coastal areas.  Through either their normal migrating or foraging activities, or during flooding events, individuals may be found offshore in the ocean.  If one of those individuals meets an unfortunate end, it may fall to the seafloor.

In prehistoric times, the impact to the deep oceans could have been even larger, as large reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs dominated the sea. Deploying a reptile in the deep sea today may reveal the animals that specialized on the carcasses of long-extinct ancient emperors of the sea.

Earlier this year, our research group placed three alligator carcasses 1.5 miles deep on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico in the first-ever alligator fall experiment.  Each of the three alligators met a different fate.

The first alligator had been on the bottom of the ocean for less than 24 hours. Despite the tough hide of the alligator, scavengers quickly got through and began to gorge themselves on the flesh of the alligator. Football-sized animals called giant isopods, relatives of rolly pollys or pillbugs, penetrated the hide in this short time-frame.  This demonstrates the speed and precision with which deep-sea scavengers can utilize any carbon source, even food from land and freshwater systems.

A little over 60 miles to the east of the first alligator, the second alligator had been sitting on the seafloor for a little over a month and a half.  All the soft tissue of the alligator had been removed by scavengers.  A small animal called an amphipod was still darting around looking for scraps, but the only thing that remained was a skeleton.  All of the soft tissue had been consumed. The spine curved just as it had been left.  A depression in the sediments indicated where the full body once laid.  The skull was turned over, likely by scavengers while picking at the flesh on the skull.

A fuzzy carpet covering the bones of the second alligator represented a brand-new species, previously unknown to science.  These zombie worms, or Osedax, colonize the bones of many types of vertebrates and consume the lipids within.  This was the first time zombie worms had ever been observed in the Gulf of Mexico or from an alligator fall.  They also demonstrate yet another pathway in which carbon from land makes its way into deep-sea food webs.

Another 60 miles east lay the third alligator.  It had only been eight days since it was laid on the seafloor.  As the camera panned to the marking device, a floating bucket lid attached to a rope like an underwater flag, it became clear that the alligator was missing.  All that remained where it had been dropped was an alligator-shaped depression in the sediments.  Drag marks in the sediment paved a path to what remained of the alligator fall.  An animal dragged this alligator 30 feet and left only the 45-pound weight and rope.  The rope had been bitten completely through. To consume an alligator, and create this disturbance, the animal must have been of great size.  We hypothesize that most likely a large shark, like a Greenland shark or sixgill shark, consumed this alligator whole.

Three alligator falls in the abyss met three very different ends, from being consumed by football-sized cousins of rolly polys, to zombie worms eating their bones, to a large shark dragging it away and consuming it whole.  This research has given us a glimpse into what impact large reptiles had in past oceans, as well as the role they play today.  It is clear that deep-ocean scavengers have no qualms about successfully and quickly consuming food that originated on land or freshwater.

Read more about this research in our group’s recent publication in PLOS One: “Alligators in the abyss: The first experimental reptilian food fall in the deep ocean.”

The post Alligators in the Abyss: Part 2 first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post Experience the Life of the Deep Gulf of Mexico in 20 Videos first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The goal was to create a tree where the top represented the ocean’s surface and the base representing the abyssal floor. With a series of white, blue, and black ribbon and silver and blue miniature bulb ornaments, we created the effect of attenuated light as you move deeper. We wanted to make sure to include both a remotely operated vehicle on a lighted tether as well as lighted bathysphere. The tree also included a giant squid attacking a shark and whale fall complete with crabs and eels. We also made some tiny experimental wood falls to resemble the real ones we now have deployed all over the Gulf of Mexico.

You can print all of these decorations yourself. The complete collection can be found in my Thingiverse collection and include:

• The research vessel on top is the ICE – the icebreaker by vandragon_de (with the addition of little printed A-frame for the aft deck.
• The basic and blocky (or to sound like a sophisticated maker low-poly) remote operated vehicle was designed by us.
• Giant Squid by TheGreenFilament
• Shark! Sliced to Print by MacGyver
• Starfish model by Empiricus
• The Voyage of the Bathysphere by themindseye
• LOW POLY CRAB by RaffoSan (for whale fall)
• Eel by Benc (for whale fall)
• Whale by YahooJAPAN (whale for whale fall)
• Giant Deep-sea Isopod by the one and only Andrew_Thaler. (The model is actually based on a real specimen in our lab.)
• Puffer Fish (of awesomeness) by Dinoman (garland)
• A simple log by Montravont
• Vampire Squid by sinryan
• Hammerhead Shark by pmoews

The post 3-D Printing the Ulitmate Deep-Sea Christmas Tree first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I was just listening to a podcast about how sea sponges use the pores all over their body to “bring in food and release wastes” and I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific way of saying the holes in sponges are all just mouths and buttholes so does that mean that when I’m using a sponge in the shower I’m cleaning my body with mouths and buttholes? Someone get me a marine biologist. And a loofah. And maybe some bleach.  -The Bloggess

All around you are animals with a single hole serving as both a mouth and anus.  These mono-orifice animals have an incomplete digestive system.  In contrast, those animals blessed with two holes, a tubular digestive system with an in and out hole, possess a complete digestive system.

Sponges are a bit of a unique case as a loose conglomeration of cells in a body full of pores and channels.  None of this really resembles organs or a digestive system with digesting occurring within individual cells.  However, the Cnidarians, including jellyfish, anemones, and corals,  are all uni-aperture.  We can also add the Ctenophores, the comb jellies, into this lone door group of animals.

In the flatworms, the Platyhelminthes, its mixed bag of one, two, and even more bodily gateways.  Most flatworms have no anus, but some particularly long species do possess an anus. In rare cases, flatworms with very complex branch guts can have more than one anus.  By the way, the plural can be either anuses or ani.

Peeping at the underside of a starfish, you might have only noticed a giant mouth.  You may be thinking to yourself, “I’ve never seen another opening.  Do starfishes have an anus?”  Of course, this is one of the great questions of life.  Indeed,  most starfishes have a complete digestive system with the anus being a small opening on the top. However, there is a large order of starfish, the Paxillosida, that lack an anus.  The only other group of Echinoderms to lack an anus, and even an intestine, is the brittle stars.

A solitary black hole may also occur during specific phases of animals life cycle.  An incomplete digestive system is known in some insects including the sap-sucking aphid relatives, the Phylloxera, during their sexual phase.  Some larvae including those of some fish and proboscis worms can be anally deficient.  Certain lifestyles also can lead to solo agujero such as in parasitic species, like parasitic copepods.

It’s important to remember that all animals start development with one hole, the blastopore.  In the ventrally chosen, a second hole forms later.  So the question remains if some animals form only a single hole is it a mouth that used as anus or anus used as a mouth?  The proverbial digestive pore chicken and egg scenario.

As described in this excellent post, 

Blastopore formation is started by a protein called disheveled, which gets stuck at the top of the egg and then activates a specific set of genes. In the same location of jellyfish embryos, however, there are genes strikingly similar to the mouth genes of bilaterians. In the sea urchin, a bilaterian, these same mouth genes are also on the top of the embryo. However, disheveled has moved to the bottom. The blastopore forms at this new site of disheveled accumulation, rather than at the mouth. The mouth genes that remain on top still direct the formation of the mouth there. Martindale and Hejnol posit that moving disheveled from the top to the bottom of the embryo in some animals moved the location of blastopore, but that the mouth stayed put. In some bilaterians, like urchins and humans, the blastopore then became the anus. In this scenario all mouths are homologous to each other, whether the animal has one or two holes.

Evolution can be a truly wonderful thing and then sometimes it can produce an animal with a mouth that still uses its anus to feed.

The post A Tale of One Opening first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post The Fantastical Beasts of the Deep Gulf of Mexico first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post Look at These Amazing Deep-Sea Creatures from the Remote Pacific Right Now first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Have you ever seen the bottom of a barnacle? Or to be totally accurate, the top? I hadn’t either until a good friend and photographer, Michael Ready, showed me this photo he took in down in Baja California. There is just something about it, that I find absolutely stunning. Similar to annual growth rings found in trees, barnacles have growth rings as well. These concentric rings that represent cyclic growth periods are called ecdysal lines (also known as cuticular slips) and are associated with barnacle molting.

For more on Mike’s work photographing the natural world, please visit: www.michaelready.com 

The post TGIF: Barnacles put a ring on it first appeared on Deep Sea News.