Creature Feature: Goblin Shark

Need an idea for a spooky Halloween costume? If you want are in the market for an ocean-inspired ghoulie, look no further than the Goblin Shark (Mitsukurina owstoni). The mysterious Goblin Shark is a deep sea creature, having been caught around the world at depths of 4300ft.  The body is flabby and slim, covered in semi-translucent dermal denticals (remember “dermal” = skin, “dentical” =  teeth). Saggy, see-through skin might sound creepy all on its own, but the Goblin Shark’s name comes from its most recognizable feature: it’s flattened and elongated snout. Their teeth are held against the underside of the head until they are ready to feed. Once ready to catch its prey, the jaws drastically protrude and, with a quick snap and a gulp, slide back into place. Goblin sharks range in size from 10-13ft but a recent record shows a female with a length of approximately 20ft. Creepy but cool!

References:

Edited by KC O’Shea

Photography: Still clip from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh_HUIJkRzU

Creature Feature: Sailfin Rough

Downward we descend to explore more mysterious creatures in the deep! The Sailfin Roughshark (Oxynotus paradoxus) is another deep water species about which little information has been discovered. What we do know about this deep water shark is based on what scientists have visually observed. Their bodies are a triangular shape, short and bluntly snouted with large denticles (skin teeth) covering the surface of their skin. The dorsal fins are very noticeable with tall sail-like fins which contains spines. As for the anal fin, well, it doesn’t have one, which is somewhat atypical for a shark. You will find this uncommon species along the Atlantic Slope from Scotland to Senegal.

Do you love learning about all the different types of sharks? What about other creatures that inhabit the water? How can you get more information about these sharks? Always eager to learn more about the unknown? You might be interested in exploring a career as a Shark Biologist!

How do you become a Shark Biologist? First, stay in school! You would need to study hard and earn a Masters or PhD. It might seem hard or scary, but it is worth it to be able learn and become an expert in something that interests you. YOU CAN DO IT! As a Shark Biologist you will learn all about shark life processes, answering questions about how large they grow, how fast they grow, their mating rituals, the physics of sharks’ movements, behavior, diet, and diseases. There is so much to learn and discover, and if you want to, YOU can be the discoverer!

As a shark biologist, you generally would focus your studies on one species in great detail, though you may learn lots about other species as well. Because sharks in the wild can be hard to observe, it can take many years to collect information and address one question. You may use many different types of technology to help in your exploring endeavors. You would spend time in the field but you would also work in a lab as you experiment and analyze data. Then, of course, you would dedicate a good amount of time to reading and studying to further knowledge, helping you on your pathway to understanding.

So if you love the water and you are flexible, hard worker, and outside the box thinker, you might just be a Shark Biologist in the making. You can practice now by researching your very own question on sharks.

References:

Edited by KC O’Shea
Photography: http://www.fishbase.de/Photos/PicturesSummary.php?ID=719&what=species
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/161361/0
http://species-identification.org/species.php?species_group=sharks&id=223

Creature Feature: Velvetbelly Lanternshark

Last week we looked at a strange looking deep sea creature, the Frilled Shark. This week we are looking at another deep sea shark that also has to deal with the stresses of living in the deep sea. This week’s Creature Feature is the illuminating Velvetbelly Lanternshark (Etmopterus spinax).

As we discussed last week, one of the big challenges down in the deep is the of lack of light. We know that food is hard to come by in the dark, but it can also be really hard to find a mate! Some people might say such a thing is challenging enough in the daylight, but this shark knows how to attract a mate. Like many other deep sea organisms this shark is bioluminescent. You should recall that bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism.  The Velvetbelly’s amazing light emission is produced by a chemical reaction between a protein called luciferin and an enzyme called luciferase which react when oxygen is present.

Velvetbelly Lanternsharks have a highly unique light pattern, the chemical reaction of which takes place within the photophores (light-producing organs).  The photophores of this shark are positioned along the lateral line, under the snout and chin, and over the belly – but not around the mouth. Many believe that these photophores have strategic chemical reactions, emitting specific light patterns intended to attract Velvetbellies to mate, lure food, and to hide from predators.

There are still many gaps in the information we possess about deep sea organisms. With current studies in submersibles, new creatures have been discovered and information about this habitat and its inhabitants are growing.

Join us next week as we look at another uncommon deep sea shark.

References:
Edited by KC O’Shea
Image from http://www.divernet.com/Marine-Life/951170/quest_for_the_lanternfish.html
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/161388/0
Claes, J. M., Ho, H.-C. and Mallefet, J. (2012). Control of luminescence from pygmy shark (Squaliolus aliae) photophores. J. Exp. Biol. 215, 1691–1699.
http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/ecology/deepsea-velvetbelly.htm
http://www.fishbase.org/summary/687
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3187880/

Creature Feature: Frilled Shark

For those of us that dwell above the surf, deep sea creatures can appear truly bizarre and other-worldly – some have even served as inspirations for creatures in science-fiction films! Which makes me think that perhaps no one has told Mr. Spielberg about the Frilled Shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus). This rare shark’s serpentine body has been known to reach a maximum length of 6.4ft. Even with its snakey body, the creep-factor doesn’t stop there. It has a lizard-like face, behind which it has 6 frilly-edged gills. Unlike most fish, the first gill slit opens continuously across the throat. As if that wasn’t freaky enough, it has around 3 hundred trident shaped teeth arranged in 25 clustered rows.  Check out the video and try to contain your heebie-jeebies.

In the deep sea there are many stresses on the organisms that live there. First, it is hard work to swim at depth with the pressure of all that water pushing against the body. Then there is the difficulty of finding food, due to sparseness and lack of light. How does this strange shark cope?

While it is difficult to know all of the habits and adaptations of deep sea creatures, scientists have made very helpful observations and are always learning more. By looking inside the body of the frilled shark, we know that special oils inside the liver help it to maintain neutral buoyancy at great depths. This allows them to hover and to use their back fins for propulsion and even possibly for striking, much like a snake. Frilled Sharks eat primarily squid, though they have been known to eat other types of deep sea fish and even not-so-deep-sea sharks. It seems to have a number of adaptations for dealing with hard to find food in the Deep. Based on the stomach contents, scientists have determined that these sharks will venture well above the bottom of the sea to find food. They also have an especially sensitive lateral line, allowing them to pick up on even the tiniest vibrations made by prey.

One of the most amazing aspects of this shark is it’s unbelievably long gestation period. If you ask your parents, you’ll find out that your own gestation period (which is the amount of time you spent growing inside your mother) was around 9 months. That’s three quarters of a year, which is a very long time to carry a growing person. It doesn’t seem so long though, when you compare that to the whopping 42 month gestation period of the Frilled Shark. That is 3.5 YEARS! It seems that things move a lot slower at great depths, with low temperatures and high pressure. Growing little sharks is no different!

Join us next week as we talk about another deep sea shark.

References:

Edited by KC O’Shea

Photography Kelvin Aitken 

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/41794/0

http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/ecology/deepsea-frilled_shark.htm

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/videos/alien-sharks-the-frilled-shark/

http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/weird-true-and-freaky/videos/frilled-shark-prehistoric-animal-f/

Creature Feature: Blobfish

This week’s creature flopped on to the blog just in time for Halloween. It is creepy, weird, and funny looking and that’s why our super rad MSI Instructor Naomi likes the Blobfish, Psychrolutes marcidus. EEK!!

 

You might be thinking, That is not a fish.  That is a pile of goo that someone molded in something vaguely fishy and cartoony.  However, the aptly named blobfish has a good reason for looking so goofy.  Blobfish do not live by the surface of the water. They live thousands of feet under the ocean in Australia!

Fish that live higher up in the water have a swim bladder. This bladder is filled with gas so that the fish can maintain buoyancy when it moves around. If you are a blobfish though, having a swim bladder is a bad idea.  If the blobfish had a swim bladder, the depth pressure would compress so much that the fish would die. There is about 120 times more pressure deep in the water compared to the surface! So instead the blob fish has more of a gelatinous body with minimal bones so that the pressure would not squish them.  In short, the blobfish looks like goo so that it doesn’t explode!

So remember: things in nature are often ugly for a very good reason.  Next time you call the blobfish ugly, know that you would look weird too if you lived down in the deep.

Reference:

Edited by KC O’Shea

Photography: http://public.media.smithsonianmag.com/legacy_blog/09_13_2013_blobfish.jpg

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/13-of-the-ugliest-animals-on-the-planet/blobfish

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/in-defense-of-the-blobfish-why-the-worlds-ugliest-animal-isnt-as-ugly-as-you-think-it-is-6676336/?no-ist

http://www.fishbase.org/summary/Psychrolutes-marcidus.html

Creature Feature: Dumbo Octopus

Photo Credit: Ed Bowlby, NOAA/Olympic Coast NMS; NOAA/OAR/Office of Ocean Exploration

We’ve shown you the eerie, the creepy and even the disturbing.  Now to end our month of deep sea creatures we give you the cute: the Dumbo Octopus, Grimpoteuthis spp. You will find this octopus in depths up to 13000 ft making this invertebrate the deepest living octopus! As you’ve probably guessed, the Dumbo octopus gets its name from the classic Disney elephant with ears big enough to fly. This octopus has two fins on top of its mantle, giving it the striking resemblance to Dumbo the elephant.  (Magic feather not included.)

The average size of this adorable creature is eight to 12 inches, though they can get larger. The largest Dumbo octopus ever found was 6ft! This octopus differs from its shallow water relatives the way they feed. The Dumbo octopus has a modified radula, or a rough, toothy sort of tongue. Their modified radula helps this octopus eat their prey whole instead of ripping and tearing them apart.

There is not much known about the cuddly-looking Dumbo octopus but, by venturing into the deep sea to study these creatures, scientists are continuing to discover new information.

References:

Photos curtosy of NOAA Digital Library

http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/dumbo_octopus

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/15/dumbo-octopus-video_n_5312440.html

http://www.critters360.com/index.php/facts-about-the-dumbo-octopus-1587/

Image ID: expl1113, Voyage To Inner Space – Exploring the Seas With NOAA Collect
Location: Washington, Olympic Coast NMS
Credit: Ed Bowlby, NOAA/Olympic Coast NMS; NOAA/OAR/Office of Ocean Exploration 

Creature Feature: Giant Isopod

Image ID: expl8141, Voyage To Inner Space – Exploring the Seas With NOAA Collect

Have you ever imagined what a pill bug or a roly poly would be like if it was a size of a baby? You probably haven’t because that’s a pretty weird thing to imagine!  Whether you have or not, you don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to know what it would be like.  That is because there is such an invertebrate known as the Giant Isopod, Bathynomus giganteus, and it grows up to 16 inches. Where will you find this large creature? You guessed it – the dark and mysterious deep sea!  They can survive in ocean depths ranging from 550-7000ft.

Credit: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, Gulf of Mexico 2012 Expedition

Just like the terrestrial (that means “land-dwelling”) pill bug, isopods have armored bodies. When threatened, they will curl up into a ball and use their hardened back plates to protect their softer underside. This massive creature is a scavenger that feeds on anything that falls to the ocean floor.  It will even feed on slow-moving organisms if it can!  Due to the lack off food in the benthos (science-speak for “bottom”) of the deep, these isopods have adapted to go a long time without food.  In a protected environment like an aquarium, they’ve been known to go as long as 4 years without anything to eat!

They have compound eyes, like most insects. Compound eyes have hundreds or even thousands of light-sensitive parts. Each part helps to create a portion of a picture resulting in a mosaic image.  If you can imagine, it would be like watching one movie on hundreds of TV screens, piece by piece.  This helps the isopod see fast moving objects and have a larger field of vision. To help these invertebrates maneuver and find food in the vast darkness of the deep, they also have large antennae. 

Depending on your opinion of humongous bugs, you may think the Giant Isopod is anything from positively AWESOME to totally GUH-ROSS!  No matter what, there is no denying that they are fascinating creatures with an amazing ability to survive.  In fact, they are one of the oldest creatures alive today.  Fossil records indicate that Giant Isopods existed more than 160 million years ago, back before the supercontinent Pangea broke apart.  The Giant Isopod really is a big, old bug!  

References:

Edited by KC O’Shea

Photo curtosy NOAA Digital Library

http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/giant-isopod.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noaaphotolib/9660928627/in/photostream/

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02mexico/logs/oct13/media/isopod.html

http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/giant_isopod

Creature Feature: Gulper Eel

 The gulper eel, Eurypharynx pelecanoides, is one of the strangest looking fish in the deep sea – and that’s really saying something! The elongated body can be anywhere from 3-6 feet long and contains photophores on its whip like tail.  (Those of you keeping up with our deep sea Creature Features will remember that photophores are the light-producing organs that create what scientists call bioluminescence in deep sea creatures.)  The eyes of the gulper eel are miniscule. They are so small, in fact, that some scientists hypothesize (that’s science-speak for “guess”) that they are used only to sense the bioluminescence produced by other organisms rather than see images like your own eyes do.

Though there are many reasons to call it strange, the oddest part of the gulper eel is the mouth. Large, wide, and with a loose hinge, the jaw of the gulper eel is what it is named for.  Like pelicans, the eel’s lower jaw expands to feed on larger organisms.  A gulper eel can swallow an animal as large as its own body!  The stomach expands so that the eel can keep continue eating even after a large meal.  Down in the abyss, it is good to stuff yourself at every meal because food can be scarce. Though they can eat larger prey, gulper eels will also chow down on smaller animals.  When a group of shrimp are present, the gulper eel swims through the water with its mouth wide open, eating shrimp as the water passes through the gill slits.  With such a big mouth, why eat one at a time?

Check out next weeks post to learn more about

the strange and unusual deep sea animals. 

References:

Edited by: KC O’Shea

Photo curtosy by NOAA Digital Library

http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/gulper-eel.html

http://oceana.org/en/explore/marine-wildlife/gulper-eel

 

Creature Feature: Dragonfish

 

Like most deep sea fish, the dragonfish, Grammatostomias flagellibarba, possesses bioluminescent or light-emitting photophores. These photophores are used for tracking mates, camouflage, and luring prey.  The scaleless dragonfish uses its barbel, a fleshy threadlike growth from its chin, to lure it’s unsuspecting prey.   It waves the barbel around until a crustacean or other small organism is close enough to snatch and eat.

SEFSC Pascagoula Laboratory; Collection of Brandi Noble, NOAA/NMFS/SEFSC

Dragonfish have very large teeth and strong jaws to feed on their prey.  While they are successful hunters, they are still prey to other deep sea creatures. Most organisms in the deep sea generate light so the dragonfish’s stomach is lined with black coloring so their predators can not see them when they are digesting.  This is a clever adaptation that keeps the dragonfish’s food from giving away its location to predators like the viperfish!

Even though they strike a frightening pose with their long sharp teeth, there is no need to fear this creepy-looking fish. They live as deep as 5000 feet below the surface – not to mention they can only grow as much as 6 inches long.  That’s only a little bit longer than an iPhone!  There is not too much known about a lot of deep sea animals but scientists work every day to study and discover new and unique species in the deep sea.

 

 

References:

Edited by KC O’Shea

Photos: courtesy of  NOAA Digital Library

http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/dragonfish.html

http://www.fishbase.org/summary/Grammatostomias-flagellibarba.html

http://deepseacreatures.org/creatures/dragonfish

Creature Feature: Viperfish

Photographer: David Csepp, NMFS/AKFSC/ABL
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/

 

This month of creature features we are going to focus on the strange and unusual. Conditions in the deep sea are very different than habitats closer to the surface, meaning deep sea organisms come in all sorts of unexpected shapes and sizes.  The life that can be found in the deep is so fantastically creepy that there have even been movies based on them! (Ever hear of the movie Alien?  Check out its inspiration, Phronima!)  Today, however, we are the freaky looking Chauliodus sloani, more commonly known as the viperfish.

Viperfish can live as deep as 5000ft. At this depth, coloration is very important.  Many deep sea creatures like the viperfish tend to have dark colored skin and scales which helps them to camouflage with the darkness of the deep. Viperfish can be dark greenish blue or gray. Some viperfish can be transparent, or see-through.  Ew!!

Like most deep sea organisms, they possess organs called photophores that are able to produce a natural light that scientists call bioluminescence.  Viperfish have an elongated dorsal fin ray that luminesces at the tip, luring its unsuspected prey right to the extremely large overgrown teeth. Their teeth are so big that they protrude out of the mouth up to the lower eye.

Credit: Personnel of NOAA Ship PISCES
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/

Viperfish will wait motionless for hours until they are able to lure in their prey. Once their prey is in sight, the viperfish will swim at highspeeds, piercing its food with its teeth. Yikes!  They hunt mostly for small fish and crustaceans but they have the ability to unhinge their upper jaw to feed on slightly larger prey. By the sound of this ferocious creature, you might guess that it could eat something as big as a human! Not to worry though: even if people could swim deep enough to meet a viperfish, they can only grow to one foot in length!

References:

Edited by KC O’Shea

http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/viperfish.html

http://www.gma.org/fogm/Chauliodus_sloani.htm

http://deepseacreatures.org/viperfish