Source: Huffington Post
Author: Hilary Hanson
Deep-sea scientists can hardly contain their awe and delight at the spectacle of a beautiful octopus seen in a new video from research vessel E/V Nautilus.
Continue reading Deep-Sea Octopus Enthralls Scientists With Otherworldy ‘Show’
Source: Mongabay
Author: Shreya Dasgupta
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Source: Phys.Org
DNA analysis recently confirmed that Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and their collaborators at OceanX, the University of Connecticut (UConn), and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) discovered two new species of deep-sea corals during a September 2018 expedition in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, located about 100 miles from the Northeast U.S. coast.
Continue reading New species of deep-sea corals discovered in Atlantic marine monument
Source: Deep Sea News
Author: River Dixon
In the beginning, people mused the expansive oceans contained but a handful of organisms. This idea started with Pliny the Elder, who lived in the first century AD. He wrote that there were only 176 species in the entirety of the ocean. This was four less than Aristotle had already found, counted, and documented in just the Aegean Sea. Apparently, Pliny wasn’t a big fan of Aristotle’s work. One paper describes this writing of Pliny’s as “gossipy” and I would just like to take a minute to thank the powers that be that none of my scientific writing has yet been described this way.
Continue reading here.
Source: Cnet
Author: Mark Serrels
University of Rhode Island shark researcher Bradley Wetherbee discovered a new type of Lantern shark while doing his doctorate in the 1990s, but it’s only in the last few years, almost 30 years later, that he’s been able to give that shark a name. And he named it after his daughter.
Continue reading A strange deep-sea shark gets a name, almost 30 years after discovery
Source: Deep Sea News
Author: Alex Warneke
California based artist and dabbler in the deep sea, Lily Simonson had me at “Party of Yeti’s.” In a new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History entitled Lily Simonson: Painting the Deep, Simonson features her large scale interpretations of the denizens of the deep. “Inspired by explorations of deep ocean life made in collaboration with Harvard University Professor Peter Girguis, Simonson’s art reflects a passion for the process of science, deep affection for the natural world, and dedication to seeking out and “bringing to light,” the beauty and mystery of places and lifeforms little known and rarely seen.”
Continue reading here.
Source: Nature
Author: Cindy Lee Van Dover
Four decades have passed since vibrant clusters of giant, metre-long tubeworms, discovered at hot springs on the ocean floor by Corliss et al.1, were reported in Science. Until then, the ocean floor was considered to be more like a desert than an oasis.
Corliss and colleagues didn’t discover underwater hot springs by accident; rather, they were trying to discover whether the hypothesis that such sites existed was correct. Theories on the movements of tectonic plates had set the course for this discovery with the idea that the mountain ranges that girdle the globe on the ocean floor, called spreading centres, are volcanic sites at the boundaries of tectonic plates. A key clue to the existence of underwater hot springs was the unexpectedly low conductive heat flux in the ocean’s crust2. Convective heat flow through hot springs could solve the riddle of this missing heat. Warm-water anomalies documented above a spreading centre called Galapagos Ridge guided Corliss et al. to the site at which they discovered underwater hot springs (also called hydrothermal vents).
Source: ChinaDialogue Ocean
Author: Ned Pennant-Rea
The UN has described the deep sea as “the largest source of species and ecosystem diversity on Earth.” Life thrives particularly on the vast expanses of sea floor known as abyssal plains, amid the submarine mountains that rise from them and around superheated springs. Extremes of temperature and pressure have proved no obstacle to the creatures here. But plans to commercially mine the seabed pose a grave threat to their survival.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Author: Liam Mannix
Under the Antarctic ice, in the pitch-black depths of the ocean, Australian scientists have discovered animals are evolving into strange and sometimes monstrous new shapes and forms.
Life, these scientists believe, is using the frigid Antarctic waters to experiment, and animals there are evolving at a much faster pace than anywhere else in the world.
Continue reading Down in the deep, beneath the Antarctic ice, a new strange world is rapidly forming
Source: National Geographic
Author: Sarah Gibbens
It felt a lot like a moon landing to the researchers who experienced it—descending thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean into complete darkness. Ambient ocean light extends down only about 600 feet. After that, no amount of straining your eyes will help you see through the inky blackness.
Scientist Tim Shank and photographer Luis Lamar were descending into Lydonia canyon, one of several among the canyons and underwater mountains sitting 130 miles from Massachusetts, when they were slowly surrounded by darkness.
Continue reading Exclusive photos show deep-sea canyon in U.S. waters teeming with life
