#fridayflow
Swimming into the weekend week like…
This orange cirrate octopus was observed by MBARI’s ROV Doc Ricketts swimming over the Taney Seamounts. These finned octopuses belong to an order of animals called Cirrata named for the presence of hair-like structures called “cirri” on their arms which may aid these animals in capturing food.The Taney Seamounts are a linear, near mid-ocean ridge chain consisting of five volcanoes located on the Pacific plate 300 kilometers (nearly 200 miles) west of San Francisco, California. Seamounts formed adjacent to mid-ocean ridges are the most abundant on Earth, numbering several orders of magnitude higher than hotspot-related seamounts.
Does anyone else need some ceph-ASMR?
MBARI’s robotic submersibles often spot this little octopus resting on the mud, its orange body resembling a flat, fluffy pancake. When startled by a predator, a flapjack octopus perks up and swims to safety by flapping its stubby fins, pulsing its webbed arms, pushing water through its funnel for jet propulsion—or all three at once. When the coast is clear, it stretches its webbed arms and parachutes back to the seafloor.
Flapjack octopuses (Opisthoteuthis spp.) can grow up to 20 centimeters (20 inches) across. They’re typically found at depths between 130 and 2,350 meters (430 and 7,710 feet) where they feed on small worms, crustaceans, and other invertebrates.
Fridays are shrimply the best.
This deep-sea shrimp, Acanthephyra sp., can be found at depths between 500 and 3,000 meters (1,640 and 9,840 feet). Like many other animals in the deep sea, these shrimp use red pigments to hide because red light is one of the first wavelengths of visible light to be absorbed by the ocean (at approximately 100 meters), rendering any animal using it invisible. The red coloration is visible in this image because lights shining from the ROV illuminate the scene.
Just going with the Friday the 13th flow.
These eyeless, mouthless worms lurk in the dark, settling onto dead animals and sending out green “roots” to devour their bones. In fact, such “boneworms” do exist in the deep sea. After planting several dead whales on the seafloor, MBARI biologists found that more than 20 different species of boneworms may live in Monterey Bay alone.
Since 2004, scientists worldwide have discovered 32 species of Osedax occurring at depths from 10 to 4,000 meters (30 to 13,125 feet). Various species can colonize a broad array of bones from fish, marine mammals, birds, turtles, and terrestrial mammals. These worms can quickly consume bones, removing visual evidence of a sunken whale skeleton in as little as a decade.
ACTUAL FOOTAGE of us going into weekend mode.
Feather stars are echinoderms like the more familiar members of that group—sea stars, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins. Also known as crinoids, these graceful invertebrates can be found at depths ranging from shallow waters to deep areas on the seafloor from the Aleutian Islands off Alaska to Baja California, Mexico. Unlike their sea lily relatives, feather stars can swim away at the slightest disturbance.High tech “smart boulders” give us a closer look at an underwater landslide.
The sediment that pours out of coastal rivers accumulates at the head of Monterey Canyon. Periodically, it collapses and forms a sediment gravity flow that surges through the submarine canyon like an underwater landslide.
Because these flows move quickly and powerfully along the seafloor, they are challenging for scientists to study. Motion-sensing “smart boulders” developed by MBARI engineers have provided the first detailed look inside sediment gravity flows.
MBARI researchers and our collaborators have learned that sediment gravity flows don’t just move along on top of the seafloor. These powerful landslides actually mobilize the top three meters (10 feet) of the seafloor, a finding with major implications for underwater infrastructure like cables carrying data and power to coastal communities. Learn more on our website.
Swimming through snow.
When MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) dive into the deep sea, we descend through flurries of tiny particles that look like snow. We call this “marine snow”—a mixture of dead plankton, waste, mucus, and other organic material slowing sinking from the ocean’s surface.
In 2021, MBARI welcomed biological oceanographer Colleen Durkin to MBARI’s science team. Durkin’s research takes a closer look at marine snow to reveal the ecology of carbon export from the surface ocean into the deep sea. Her lab seeks to fill in the gaps in our understanding of the ocean’s carbon cycle by taking a closer look at marine snow. Read more about her research in this year’s Annual Report.
We call this maneuver the Flapjack Fly-by.
MBARI’s robotic submersibles often spot this little octopus resting on the seafloor, its orange body resembling a flat, fluffy pancake. When startled by a predator, a flapjack octopus perks up and swims to safety by flapping its stubby fins, pulsing its webbed arms, pushing water through its funnel for jet propulsion—or all three at once. When the coast is clear, it stretches its webbed arms and parachutes back to the ocean floor.
