A Holocentrus hastatum, or Sargocentron hastatus, or red soldier fish. They have big spines, you see.

This one comes from A Natural History of Fish, by Georges Cuvier and M. Valenciennes, which I found on wapiti8′s Flickr account.

You want to learn about the hidden history of the ocean? Look within, Nature says… within the earwax of a mighty blue whale:

The team, led by Sascha Usenko, a environmental scientist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, extracted an earplug from a blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) killed in a collision with a ship off the coast of Santa [...]

Image originally from Suggestions to the keepers of the U.S. life-saving stations, light-houses, and light-ships; and to other observers, relative to the best means of collecting and preserving specimens of whales and porpoises. By Frederick W. True.

It seems like the whales hover courtesy of the Smithsonial Libraries Tumblr, which seems very likely to be an unofficial outlet unaffiliated with [...]

“Genre de mollusques gastropodes, renfermant des animaux nus, de touts les mers.”

A popular genre of gastropods. Also the name of a boat (a dory, I reckon) and a mythological personage (daughter of Ocean and Tethys, wife of Neree, have no idea what she’s really known for).

Happy Mother’s Day, little nudibranch.

We’ve had The Larousse For You in these [...]

This is a few weeks old by now, but still in fashion in a gorgeously disgusting way. Science News celebrates the creation of fine fabrics using hagfish slime:

“The tensile properties approach those of spider silk, and that’s very exciting,” says biomaterials specialist Douglas Fudge of the University of Guelph in Canada. Synthetic fabrics such as nylon are derived from [...]

Vice, of all publications, examines the strange chemistry of the first-known psychedelic sponges… trying to figure out why sponges would make something as potent as DMT anyway:

It would be a tragically anthropocentric mistake to assume that Smenospongia aurea produces 5-Br-DMT and related tryptamines to provide terrestrial vertebrates such as you and me with a transient psychedelic high. Serotonin [...]

BBC reveals that giant squid, no matter where they’re found or how different from each other they look, are all genetically really close to one another:

An international team of researchers investigated rare samples of the elusive animals’ DNA to reveal their family secrets.

They discovered that there is just a single species of squid with no population structure.

The findings [...]

Click to embiggen

I couldn’t resist this when I saw the name of the book it came from: Italian Food, by Elizabeth David. It’s an improbable English cookbook from the 1950s:

…David was a knowledgeable cook who delighted in the history and sensuality of recipes, sometimes at the expense of the how-to. Her instructions for pasta con le sarde [...]

NBC News is wondering what’s behind the massive blooms of marine microorganisms that are killing so many manatees:

Florida wildlife officials report that 149 of the gentle giants have been killed by red tide this year in just two and a half months, making it almost certain that the state will pass the record of 151, set in 1996.

The [...]