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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Aug-2025 15:39:32 JST Adrianna Tan

   A few random marine facts I’ve learned:

   - some southern sea otters eat so much purple sea urchin that their skulls turn purple
   - the whales in Monterey bay don’t need to do bubble net feeding because there is so much food, unlike the situation for whales elsewhere
   - California sea lions work with humpback whales where the sea lions corral the fish, the whales open their mouths and feed, and any fish that comes out stunned is picked up by the sea lions
   - a sea urchin’s mouth is also called Aristotle’s Lantern (watch a video)
   - Mola Mola eventually evolved the ability to retract their eyeballs into their sockets so that when they were lying on the surface, having their parasites cleaned by gulls, they won’t peck out their eyes too
   - the orca in Monterey don’t eat the whales, but they like to nip at them. So some whales have rake marks on their bodies that continue to look obvious and visible even if they got them as calves
   - whale milk has the consistency described as like if cottage cheese was also toothpaste, and is ejected directly into calves’ mouths with minimal loss in seawater
   - sunflower sea stars are carnivores

   #Marine #Science #Ocean

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Aug-2025 09:19:56 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I have been informed that Aristotle’s lantern is inaccurate now

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Sep-2025 06:52:52 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     More random marine facts:

     - only 30% of the deep sea floor has been mapped. The work continues. This generation’s era-defining fight will be about hands off deep sea mining
     - the deepest part of the ocean is known as the hadal zone (6000-10 000m / 20-36 000 ft)
     - siphonophores look like a single animal but they are made of many different zooids, each playing its own role. Some catch prey, some swim, some reproduce. Some can be longer than a blue whale
     - ‘marine snow’ or ‘ocean dandruff’ (organic material that falls into the deep sea, looking like dandruff) is an important food source
     - along with whale fall. When a whale dies and its carcass sinks to the sea floor, an entire ecosystem of animals and bacteria will be fed for a long time. Osedax are bone eating worms that can bore into bone, feed off collagen, etc. they have no mouth, anus or gut
     - male deep sea anglerfish fuse physically to females they find. Females can have more than one male fused to her. The males start to lose their eyes, fins and organs.. and just live on like that. They share blood circulation
     - creatures that are red are invisible in the dark.
     - the largest migration happens daily: when deep sea creatures migrate up to feed https://youtu.be/tJ1gRfXTIIg
     - 80 miles off from Monterey / Moss landing there is an octopus garden in the deep sea floor near the hydrothermal vents. 6000 - 2000 female octopus are there brooding their eggs. They sit there, without feeding, for a year or more and die shortly after their job is done https://www.mbari.org/project/the-octopus-garden/

     The deep sea is a treasure. Many medicines have been formulated from research in the deep sea. Companies are already trying to exploit it https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/571758/cook-islands-children-s-book-on-deep-sea-nodules-is-about-facts-says-author

     #Marine #Science

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Sep-2025 08:03:19 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Deb Chachra

     @debcha lemme know if you come!!

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     Deb Chachra (debcha@saturation.social)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Sep-2025 08:03:20 JST Deb Chachra

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Longtime Osedax fan here and so much of the good work is out of MBARI — a friend/colleague and I met with folks there about possible collaborations (we both did research on bone biology). Also wrote text for a visual essay on Osedax (site now defunct, alas), describing whalefall ecosystems as the ‘dark inverse of coral reefs’ (a carcass in the hadal dark rather than living coral in the sunlit shallows). Excited about making to Monterey to see the new deep sea exhibit!