Deep Sea Animals & Life — Fundamental Patterns, Convergent Evolution, & Other Worlds

February 9, 2015 in Animals & Insects

It’s been said before that the deep sea may as well be another world considering how distant it is from us, and how strange some of the life forms that live down may there seem to us.

And indeed in some ways the life-forms that live down there do seem strange, but at the same time they certainly do have something clearly recognizable about them do they not? Strange, but also familiar at the same time? Not quite truly alien — if it’s even possible for people to conceive of or imagine (or perhaps even be aware of?) the truly alien. Perhaps the world is filled up with the “truly alien” but it’s just that people aren’t aware of it?

After all, everything really just comes down to familiarity does it not? And people can get used to practically anything after all, even the rather strange ways that modern people live, for example.
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Dead Jellyfish Blooms Vital To Deep Sea Ecosystem Health, Study Finds

February 7, 2015 in Animals & Insects

Dead jellyfish blooms appear to be vital to the health of many deep-sea ecosystems, based on new research National Oceanography Centre that investigated the speed at which these dead blooms are eaten.

It had previously been thought that when large blooms of jellyfish died that they often simpy fell to the ocean floor and rotted, rather than being eaten, as the sheer quantity excluded the eating of all of the bloom — thereby depleting the oxygen on the ocean floor, and creating a dead zone of sorts. The new work suggests that these assumptions were off-base.

Jellyfish blooms
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Brink Of Extinction — Giant Leatherback Sea Turtle, Siberian Tiger, Mountain Gorilla, North Pacific Right Whale, & Philippine Eagle

February 5, 2015 in Animals & Insects

With human expansion continuing at its relentless pace — and deforestation, soil erosion, species extinctions, and climatic changes, accompanying it — there are a significant number of animals nearing the brink of extinction.

While listing all of them here would be impossible — there are far, far too many — I still think that it’s worth going over some of the more prominant of the many critically endangered animals in the world today.

And, to that end, the article below will highlight 5 of those critically endangered animals — the Giant Leatherback Sea Turtle, the Siberian Tiger, the Mountain Gorilla, the North Pacific Right Whale, and the Philippine Eagle.
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Jellyfish Species — Box Jellyfish, Deepstaria Enigmatica, Praya Dubia, Lion’s Mane Jellyfish, Marrus Orthocanna, Man O’ War, Tima Formosa, Crossota, & Unidentified

January 20, 2015 in Animals & Insects

Jellyfish are some of the most strange, interesting — and occasionally beautiful — animals currently living in the world. And they’ve been here for quite a long time — some species are, in many ways, unchanged from the way that there hundreds of millions of years ago.

Owing to these facts, and — more importantly — their striking appearances I’ve created the list below compiling some of the most interesting species of jellyfish. Enjoy.

Jellyfish bloom ocean

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Overfishing Causing Jellyfish Population Boom, Research Finds (+Recent Examples Of Overfishing)

May 16, 2013 in Animals & Insects, Humans

Jellyfish populations around the world have been increasing in recent years, and several very large jellyfish blooms have been reported since the early 2000s. The cause of these, and the general population increase, has remained somewhat unclear until now though. Is it simply observation bias? Cyclic population change? Warming waters? Changing currents?

20130516-140810.jpg

But now, thanks to new research from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), the causes have become clear. The primary cause is overfishing, and with it the decline of many ecologically important species. Many significant predators of jellyfish, such as tuna and sea turtles, have seen their numbers plummet in recent years as a result of overfishing. And with their decline, jellyfish have begun to see their populations grow. But perhaps far more important than that decline, though, is the overfishing of small pelagic fish, such as sardines and herring, which are the main competitors of jellyfish.

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