Very interesting deep sea critters.....

[H2Andy]

wow... great pics, great blurbs... very very nice!

and i love that profile pic lol

 

[Phaethon]

I just struck the deep diving section off my AOW course!

===8^O

K.
(now scared of puddles...)

 

[Doc Intrepid]

great photos. thanks to all...

 

[Chummer]

No Archman, I wasnt on the expedition.
I just came across this on the net and thought it would be interesting to share with fellow divers.
I didnt mean to mislead anyone!

 

[Jambi]

Those are some great pictures! Can you imagine poking around in your garden, pulling weeds and such, you look over and OMG you a "Bathynomus giganteus" aka freaking huge pill bug in your garden! archman, your mission if you choose to accept it, is to plant one of these things while someone is gardening and take pictues! Then you must post it for all of us to see


Jambi

 

[Scubakevdm]

Awesome. Thanks both of you. Archman, looks like you have a fair amount of free time back at the old lab. Is that Beaker in a home made scuba costume? Nice work.

 

[archman]

your mission if you choose to accept it, is to plant one of these things while someone is gardening and take pictues! Then you must post it for all of us to see
Jambi

Well, I DO happen to have one handy in a pickle jar... makes a great coffee table piece.

I couldn't complete a discourse on deep sea animals without showing a pic of an elasipodid sea cucumber. These 95% seawater things (shown here by a colorful pic of a big Psychropotes) are the most abundant large-bodied organisms on the planet, quietly slurping up mud at the bottom of the sea.
Most people just think they're pretty. That deep purple colour is a common one for deep-sea critters.

 

[archman]

Is that Beaker in a home made scuba costume? Nice work.

That would be "Deep Sea Diving Elmo." Our marine techs made his costume, and even equipped him with twin tanks created from two AA batteries. Brave Elmo made multiple trips down into the great abyss, carabinered to a 500lb steel mud corer. After the first jaunt his "scuba tanks" ruptured (wasn't pretty either), so in future trips he had to hold his breath. Once the corer must have toppled over on him, since he came back covered in frozen mud.
Elmo's now retired, but he went out in a bang... his last trip exceeded 2 miles straight down. He had to hold his breath for over 90 minutes!!

 

[Scubakevdm]

Psychropotes are the most abundant large-bodied organisms on the planet.

Is that Psychro from the Greek Psychrotes meaning "Brain-eater" and Potes meaning "Alien"? I can see why most people would find them pretty. They have that Deep Water Allure, that Je n' se quoi, and they're shiney to boot.

 

[Isistius]

Cool photos, Archman. For the record, <i>Lophius</i> sp. are not sexually dimorphic. Their relatives the ceratioid anglerfishes are, however.

cheers
Ben

Last pic's a big goosefish, a type of deepwater angler. This one's pretty stinking massive (meter or so long), and like all angler's, only the female is free-living. Male anglerfishes are miniscule, and their only job is to find a female and clamp down with their mouth somewhere on her body. Eventually his internal structure fuses with hers... leaving him as this bizarre external symbiote that donates sperm.