Cone snails trick their prey into thinking it’s time to get it on. Then they eat ’em.
Science News shares a nightmare scenario from the ocean. The lights are low, there’s slow music playing, and look, there’s someone sexy over by the […]
marine biology
There’s a new whale in the Gulf of Mexico. A whole new species, in fact.
NPR introduces us to a 42-foot-long stranger, the Rice’s whale. The mysterious species is large in size, but small in number, hanging out in off […]
Lobster-shell patterns make concrete stronger.
Reuters reveals a new technique to strengthen ordinary concrete by imitating the criss-cross pattern of lobster shells: Reinforced with steel fibres, the concrete becomes more […]
Science Art: Lamprometra protectus, ventral view of a specimen with 23 arms from Stat. 125., 1918
This is a crinoid, a cousin to sea urchins, sea cucumbers and starfish. I suppose some of them have stalks like sea anemones, but these […]
Light-loving algae survive, trapped under dark Arctic ice.
Science News plunges into the dark, icy depths to discover how it is that phytoplankton, which convert sunlight to energy, survive and even thrive under […]
Can you hold your breath for more than 3 1/2 hours? This guy can.
Science News reports on a new record – three hours and 42 minutes underwater without coming up for air – set by a Cuvier’s beaked […]
SONG: All I See
SONG: “All I See” [Download] ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Scientific American, 28 July 2020, “The Brittle Star That Sees with Its Body”, as used […]
A brittle star’s whole body is an eye.
Scientific American looks at how these starfish relatives don’t need eyes to see: And yet now there appears to be something far stranger about the […]
Science Art: Florarctus antillensis Van Der Land 1968, from “Tardigrades marins des Bermudes,” 1970
Click to embiggen A water bear from Bermuda, as published in 1970 (a good time to be in Bermuda). Florarctus antillensis was apparently first discovered […]
These sea worms look sequined – so we named them after Elvis
Science News reviews the show-stopping submarine research that has gone behind the scenes with four species of sequined sea worms that have collectively been named […]
Science Art: Cephalopodes: Pl. III, 1889.
Click to embiggen Prince Albert I of Monaco was really into marine life, and used the royal yacht as a scientific research vessel. Here, from […]
There are nuclear-bomb layers in whale sharks’ bones.
Science News has what’s practically a Godzilla story: the discovery that residue from Cold War-era nuclear bomb tests can be found inside the bodies of […]
Science Art: Taf. II: Palephyra indica, Atorella subglobosa, Sanderia malayensis, 1902.
Click to embiggen These are from Die acraspeden Medusen der deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition: 1898-1899, the first of two volumes on jellyfish written by Ernst Vanhöffen, a […]
Seals talk with applause. OK, clapping. They clap to each other.
Science Daily leads a round of applause for researchers who’ve found that seals clap to each other underwater: “The discovery of ‘clapping seals’ might not […]
How to mine the bottom of the sea.
The Atlantic goes deep, deeper than ever in search of the wealth beneath the ocean floor: Today, many of the largest mineral corporations in the […]