MVP

You, a normie: “Most Valued Player”

Me, an intellectual: “Minimum Viable Population”

This photo has stuck with me for years. Balance in all things. @annieguttridge on Instagram

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…a sea slug! The spanish dancer nudibranch brings a new level of excitement to diving with slugs. Where most nudis amble slowly over their environment, the spanish dancer can actively swim by twisting its body and pumping water with its large, flowing “skirt.” The fluffy tuft on its back end are actually gills, and give the nudibranch its name - nudi meaning naked, and branch meaning gills! Found at @reefdivers on Instagram.

You’ve heard of a hammerhead shark, but have you ever heard of a winghead shark? Little is known about this eccentric-looking species and why they’ve evolved such an exaggerated hammer-head, called a cephalofoil, though the current popular theory is that the larger surface area is simply better at detecting prey buried beneath the sand. The youngster in this image was captured for tagging and released. This species is endemic to northern Australia and is classified as Near Threatened.

Photo credit: Dr. Tristan Guttridge

This is a juvenile mola mola, or ocean sunfish, the largest species of bony fish. It comes to most people’s surprise that such a large adult animal produces such small and vulnerable offspring (when first hatched they are a mere 2mm), but they also produce around 300 million eggs, their fecundity surpassing all other vertebrates on earth! This particular youngster was spit up by another fish that was caught, and had already passed away. (Credit to @derin.goya.fishing on Instagram)

A baby octopus with the most perfect, tiny heart mark over the beak! This was captured by Paul Caiger (@PaulCaiger on Instagram), posted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI).

The biologist namedJo Brown and her sketchbook.

I love when articles leave in mentions of the scientist getting enrichment in their native habitats

Annihilation:The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

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Moby Dick: It is not down on any map; true places never are.