Water Creatures For Your Eyes

in my graduate school marine lab era

Photographer Steven Kovacs captures rare marine life off the coast of Florida (2021). © BluePlanetArchive/Steven Kovacs

Photos by Meg Mindlin

megmindlin.com

Knuckle Puck

Greetings, chordate comrades.

I’m attempting to export yet another culture we’ve had for the past few years on the dying birdsite. Basically three times a year we’d use the hashtag #InverteFest to post unsolicited bug and slug pics and YELL ABOUT HOW MUCH WE LOVE THEM.

It could be pics from your garden, OCs, doodles, shitposts, crab memes, whatever. Just remember this is strictly a NO BONE ZONE.

But if you’re going out and feeling like contributing to community science, we have a project on iNaturalist for you to join.

See you in late December.

Deep Sea Threadfin Snailfish 🖤

These beauties live in depths of 1,080 - 2,365 m or 3,543 - 7,759 ft, although there have been some viewings of them above and below these parameters.

They are found in the Arctic, northeastern Atlantic, and northern Pacific oceans and grow to be about 31 cm or 12 in!

Loligo pealeii

go mentally deranged yeh. go brainless yeh. go wacky. go positively bonkers yeh. go mad bruv. lose ya marbles yeh. go foolish

Daily fish fact #519

Handfish!

They're anglerfish which have adapted to using their pectoral fins as legs, using them to walk on the seafloor instead of swimming!

Skeleton of Mola Mola as Mola rotunda - the Ocean sunfish

Spolia Atlantica. Bidrag til Kundskab om Klump- eller Maanefiskene (Molidae). Japetus Steenstrup and Chr Lutken Published 1898

Daily fish fact #278

Barreleyes!

They have barrel-shaped tubular eyes, which are enclosed inside their head under a layer of transparent soft tissue! They use their peculiar eyes to look for prey that might be floating directly above them; they live deep underwater just at the edge of where light penetration ends, but thanks to their eyes with a large number of rods (a type of photoreceptor) they can see very well into the waters above.