Sea cucumbers aren’t all boring, trundling bags. Some of them swim — and glow. Though I opted to focus on creatures found at greater depths in my last post, one of the creatures observed by the Deepsea Challenger expedition in the New Britain Trench at a relatively shallow 1000 meters was just such a swimming [...]

The deepest, darkest, scariest place on the maps I loved pondering as a child was a crescent-shaped canyon in the western Pacific Ocean. It was called the Mariana Trench, and at the very, very bottom was the lowest point on Earth’s surface, the Challenger Deep. Its floor was seven terrifying miles down. What was down [...]

It’s often said that we know less about the bottom of our own ocean than we do about the surface of Mars. The governments of the world, and our government in particular, seem presently much less than enthusiastic about exploring the oceans of our own planet than in exploring other planets (ocean research seems to [...]

At least gazelles can run. But if you’re a tree, a blade of grass, or a hapless kohlrabi, there’s nothing you can do when the choppers, nippers, or clippers of your predator — aka “grazer” — approach. Such is the fate of most photosynthetic organisms, which we landlubbers tend to think of as plants. But [...]

Blogger’s note: I’m still away from the blog taking care of important life stuff, but I’ll be back soon! This post originally appeared on March 28, 2010. It has been edited slightly. Earlier this week I posted a link to Victorian microscope slides that included arranged diatom art. People really seemed to respond to the [...]

When the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico, its odyssey doesn’t end. It enters an underwater valley called the Mississippi Canyon, a world where nutrients from the river nourish some fantastical forms of life. One part of this canyon looks like this: The graceful white sculptures sprouting from carbonate outcrops are Lophelia coral. [...]

While in the southern hemisphere, I’ve taken every opportunity I can to dive. It’s the hiking of the submarine world: good exercise, and lots of pretty stuff to see. One my final dives, on the reefs of the remote island of Rarotonga in the New-Zealand -dministered Cook Islands*(see here for locator map), I encountered an [...]

On land, snails and slugs — the Gastropods — are confined to terrestrial prison, but in the ocean, they are free to shed their shells and fly. These are the sea angels, the sea butterflies, and the sea elephants — and probably quite a few more I’m not aware of. For instance, this slinky and [...]

In 1977, scientists and the world were shocked to discover the first deep-sea hydrothermal vent community at the Galapagos Rift in the eastern Pacific (see a great story on this at NPR here). At this site, chimneys spewing black, superheated and chemically supersaturated water towered over fields of blood-red tube worms encased in white sheaths, [...]

If you live in the upper ocean, it pays to be transparent to avoid the gaze of Things Bigger and Hungrier Than You, since sunlight will pass right through. But if you live deep in the ocean, where predators often come equipped standard with searchlights, being transparent means  lighting up like a Christmas tree under [...]

For the past few days we’ve covered some of the scientists on board through their PI’s: Kay Bidle, Jack DiTullio and Rachel, Petey and Jacob, Marco Coolen and Cherel, Anna Martins, Assaf and his gang. But there are still some scientists you haven’t met yet. Let’s go alphabetically. Benjamin Bailleul is a physicist turned physical [...]

Yesterday we learned about how normal viruses work. Today, we’re finally getting to how this particular Ehux virus does it’s thing. What method of predation does the virus use on Emiliania huxleyi? Jim Wallstrum Spokane from Washington So we’re back to Ehux. Just like other viruses and hosts, Ehux and Ehux-86 are locked in an [...]

Researchers have been visiting locations in the western North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea for more than two decades to better understand the large patches of plastic that have formed there. Although the mysteries surrounding exactly how the plastic gets to these locations, where it comes from and what impact it’s having on marine life [...]

James Prosek is best known for his meticulously painted fish images. But his recent foray into sculpture is equally as interesting and thought-provoking. Through the end of September, a variety of his fanciful bone sculptures as well as his fish portraits will be on display at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. EXHIBIT: [...]