<
https://www.sciencealert.com/ghostly-creature-deep-in-the-ocean-is-like-nothing-weve-seen-before>
'Picture yourself sinking, slowly, beneath the waves.
As you fall, the Sun becomes smaller, and dimmer, and dimmer still. The cold
waters crush in around you as the pressure increases. Now you're in complete
darkness, so deep that the sunlight can't reach you. Then, astonishingly, you
see a flicker of light, from a creature unlike any humans have seen before.
It's a nudibranch, recently discovered swimming freely in the water column lit
by a bioluminescent glow, adorned with a billowing hood, by researchers from
the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in the US.
This is
Bathydevius caudactylus, the first known nudibranch of its kind:
living not in shallow waters, or on the seafloor, but more than 2,200 meters
(around 7,220 feet) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean in the bathypelagic
zone, out in open water.
"Most nudibranchs live on the bottom in shallow water, so it was very
surprising to find a nudibranch so deep in the water column and far from the
bottom," MBARI marine scientist Bruce Robison told
ScienceAlert.
"We knew of a few species that live on the deep seafloor but none had ever been
reported in deep midwaters."
Sea slugs of the nudibranch order are among the most charismatic of the
molluscs. They're often brightly colored, with ornate appendages and patterns.
They're often found on reefs, where some species munch coral; others eat algae,
sponges, anemones, jellyfish, or even other nudibranchs.
They're diverse, and versatile, but that versatility was thought to be
restricted to a certain range. This is one of the reasons why MBARI researchers
nicknamed the animal "mystery mollusc" when they came across it while piloting
the remotely operated research vehicle
Tiburon at a depth of 2,614 meters.
"When we first filmed it glowing with the ROV, everyone in the control room let
out a loud 'Oooooh!' at the same time," Haddock says. "We were all enchanted by
the sight."'
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/280-murderbot/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
