Wolffish Fish Facts

Kingdom	Animalia
Phylum	Chordata
Class	Actinopterygii
Order	Perciformes
Family	Anarhichadidae
Scientific Name	Anarhichadidae
Prey	Crabs, clams, sea urchins, starfish, and others
Group Behavior	Solitary/Pairs
Fun Fact	The wolffish has impressive canines with a powerful bite force!
Estimated Population Size	Unknown
Biggest Threat	Habitat destruction and accidental catches
Most Distinctive Feature	The long eel-like body and sharp teeth
Other Name(s)	Sea wolf
Gestation Period	Three to nine months
Habitat	Coastal waters
Predators	Sharks and humans
Diet	Carnivore
Type	Fish
Common Name	Wolffish
Number Of Species	5
Color	Brown Grey Blue White Green
Skin Type	Scales
Lifespan	At least 12 years
Weight	Up to 50 pounds
Length	Up to 7.5 feet

With its sharp canines, powerful jaws, and carnivorous lifestyle, the wolffish has a fearsome and devil-like appearance that lets you know it is a true predator of the sea.

The name derives from its resemblance to the famous canine wolf species, but the similarities end there. The wolffish is a rather solitary hunter that forms tight-knit bonds with its mate.

It is also an ambush predator and not a pack animal. The wolffish is an unfortunate victim of humanity’s destructive fishing practices, and several species are now in peril. Keep reading in https://cedointercultural.org/‘s article to learn more about this fish.

4 Incredible Wolffish Facts!

The wolf fish is also known as the sea wolf, devil fish, or eel wolf in some places.
The wolf fish can thrive in the Arctic regions as far north as Greenland. It has evolved antifreeze proteins that circulate in the blood to keep its body functioning properly in the cold waters of the north.
These fish has a very powerful bite force that can crush the hard shell of mollusks and crustaceans almost instantly. Curiously, it does not usually hunt or feed on the soft flesh of other fish.
Lacking a bladder: This fish doesn’t have a swim bladder or a bladder full of air. As a result, they have to keep swimming at all times. If they stopped to float, they’re so heavy they would sink to the bottom!

Evolution and Origins

The Anarhichadidae family said to have begun roughly 50 million years ago, is where the evolution and origins of wolffish may be found. Natural selection and adaptation to their habitat, which includes dwelling at extreme depths and in freezing water temperatures, are likely to have led to these fish’s current shape.

The wolffish have evolved over time to have their distinctively pointed teeth, strong jaws, and other physical features that help them hunt and survive in their aquatic environments.

Furthermore, the Atlantic wolffish can live for up to twenty years and have a delayed reproductive cycle, as they are unable to reproduce until they reach eight to ten years of age.

During the spring to summer months, they pair up to breed, with mating occurring in the fall. Unlike most fish species, their method of fertilizing their eggs is quite distinct.

Different Types

Here are the different types of wolfish:

Northern wolffish: Anarhichas denticulatus Krøyer, 1845.
Atlantic wolffish (also known as sea wolf): Anarhichas lupus Linnaeus, 1758.
Spotted wolffish: Anarhichas minor Olafsen, 1772.
Bering wolffish: Anarhichas orientalis Pallas, 1814.

Scientific Name

The wolffish is a family of species that goes by the scientific name of Anarhichadidae. This apparently derives from a Greek term meaning climb up.

They are most closely related to eelpouts, gunnels, and quillfish in the order of Perciformes. This is actually one of the most diverse orders of animals in the world. It comprises more than 10,000 species and 40% of all bony fish.

Species

There are currently five documented species of these fish divided among two genera. Four of these species reside in the genus Anarhichas, while the wolf eel is the only species in the genus of Anarrhichthys. Here is a list of all five Wolffish species.

The main difference between them is their appearance and location:

Atlantic Wolffish: Featuring a blue-gray body, a large dorsal fin, and a light underside, this species resides in a stretch of territory between Labrador, Massachusetts, Greenland, Iceland, the North Sea area, and the coasts of Norway and Russia. It also resides as far south as France and Spain. The scientific name for this species is Anarhichas lupus (lupus means wolf in Latin).

Spotted Wolffish: Also known as a leopard fish, this species inhabits both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean between Russia and Canada. Featuring dark spots, the color varies between olive green and brown.

Northern Wolffish: Also known as the rock turbot, the bull-headed catfish, the Arctic wolffish, and many other names, this species is native to the North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans.

Bering Wolffish: As the name implies, this species is found around the Pacific regions of Russia and Alaska.

Wolf Eel: This species has a very long body that resembles an eel, but it is actually a pure wolffish. It resides in the North Pacific region.

Appearance

These fish appears quite ugly, grizzled, and almost devil-like to the human eye but looks can be deceiving. There is nothing particularly aggressive about the wolffish compared to any other carnivore, whether appealing or not to our visual senses.

The wolffish is characterized by its incredibly long body (up to 7.5 feet), a big head, slender tail, powerful jaws that can inflict a painful wolffish bite, and multiple rows of teeth, some of which project outward from the mouth even when it’s closed.

The most common colors are blue, gray, brown, and olive green sometimes accompanied by stripes along the side of the body. It has very rudimentary and reduced scales almost hidden in the skin.

Most species have a long dorsal fin running the entire length of the back and another fin covering much of the stomach and pelvic areas. The wolffish moves through the water very slowly by waving its body back and forth like an eel.

Distribution, Population, and Habitat

The wolffish resides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at depths between 1,000 feet and 2,000 feet. For most of the day, the wolffish lie patiently in crevices or caves to surprise and ambush unsuspecting prey that happens to pass by. This sedentary lifestyle is a deliberate tactic to kill prey in the most efficient manner possible since the wolffish is not very fast.

Several species of wolffish have been threatened by humans. It is rarely consumed in large enough quantities for overfishing to be a problem, but in some parts of the Atlantic, population numbers have declined drastically as a result of habitat destruction and accidental catches.

Some trawling methods are so indiscriminate that they cause both problems at the same time. As the net is dragged across the bottom of the sea, it disrupts habitats and catches everything in its path, including huge masses of wolffish eggs, which may eradicate an entire generation of the species. One scientist estimated that trawling affected every inch of the New England seafloor between 1984 and 1990.

And even when it doesn’t affect the wolffish directly, trawling will catch other animals, thus reducing the abundance of prey on which the wolffish relies for survival. Without appropriate conservation and population management efforts, some wolffish are facing the real possibility of extinction.

Predators and Prey

The wolffish is an opportunistic bottom feeder that will wait for the prey to come to it. With its sharp canines, the wolffish bite aids it in eating sea creatures that are otherwise tough to consume.

The wolffish is well-adapted for crunching into the tough shells of crabs, clams, sea urchins, starfish, and other hard-shelled prey. It plays an important role in the ecosystem by keeping these fast-reproducing creatures in check.

Because of its size and the ferocity of the wolffish bite, the wolffish has relatively few regular predators besides sharks and humans. Even then it is hardly the first choice of prey, because the wolffish can inflict a very painful bite on humans or any other creature in defense of itself. Otherwise, though, it is not very aggressive.

Reproduction and Lifespan

These fish has a rather unusual reproduction cycle. In the spawning season, which peaks around September and October, it forms bonded pairs and sometimes even mates for life. Unlike many species of fish, in which the females release unfertilized eggs into the water, the wolffish fertilizes the eggs internally. The female then lays thousands of eggs in huge masses between seaweed or crevices.

It takes around three to nine months for the eggs to fully hatch. Both parents play a pivotal role in raising the young, but the father has the main task of protecting the larvae in the nest for the next few months before they become independent.

The young fry reaches sexual maturity at a relatively late age of five or sometimes even more (this late maturity also means that it takes time for numbers to recover when they fall, complicating conservation efforts). The typical wolffish has a life expectancy of more than 12 years.

Fishing and Cooking

The Atlantic wolffish is a target of recreational fishermen due to its appealing taste.

The Atlantic wolffish, like the northern and spotted wolffish, is often caught in commercial fishermen’s nets as bycatch. This means the commercial fishermen don’t intend to catch them, but they end up in the nets with other fish in the environment.

The population and habitat of these fish are under threat from nets used for bottom trawling. These nets disrupt their eggs, the adults, and the elements of their habitat.

The Atlantic wolfish has a sweet flavor that some have compared to lobster. It’s usually baked, grilled, or broiled. They are low in calories, but high in fat and protein.

There are 10 to 15 tonnes of these caught each year. Also, there are approximately 1,000 tonnes of spotted wolfish are caught each year.

No One Is Prepared for Hagfish Slime

It expands by 10,000 times in a fraction of a second, it’s 100,000 times softer than Jell-O, and it fends off sharks and Priuses alike.

At first glance, the hagfish—a sinuous, tubular animal with pink-grey skin and a paddle-shaped tail—looks very much like an eel. Naturalists can tell the two apart because hagfish, unlike other fish, lack backbones (and, also, jaws). For everyone else, there’s an even easier method. “Look at the hand holding the fish,” the marine biologist Andrew Thaler once noted. “Is it completely covered in slime? Then, it’s a hagfish.”

Hagfish produce slime the way humans produce opinions—readily, swiftly, defensively, and prodigiously. They slime when attacked or simply when stressed. On July 14, 2017, a truck full of hagfish overturned on an Oregon highway. The animals were destined for South Korea, where they are eaten as a delicacy, but instead, they were strewn across a stretch of Highway 101, covering the road (and at least one unfortunate car) in slime. Keep reading to know further about this creatures https://cedointercultural.org/

Typically, a hagfish will release less than a teaspoon of gunk from the 100 or so slime glands that line its flanks. And in less than half a second, that little amount will expand by 10,000 times—enough to fill a sizable bucket. Reach in, and every move of your hand will drag the water with it. “It doesn’t feel like much at first, as if a spider has built a web underwater,” says Douglas Fudge of Chapman University. But try to lift your hand out, and it’s as if the bucket’s contents are now attached to you.

The slime looks revolting, but it’s also one of nature’s more wondrous substances, unlike anything else that’s been concocted by either evolution or engineers. Fudge, who has been studying its properties for two decades, says that when people first touch it, they are invariably surprised. “It looks like a bunch of mucus that someone just sneezed out of their nose,” he says. “That’s not at all what it’s like.”

For a start, it’s not sticky. If there wasn’t so damn much of it, you’d be able to wipe it off your skin with ease. The hagfish themselves scrape the slime off their skin by tying a knot in their bodies and sliding it from head to tail.

The slime also “has a very strange sensation of not quite being there,” says Fudge. It consists of two main components—mucus and protein threads. The threads spread out and entangle one another, creating a fast-expanding net that traps both mucus and water. Astonishingly, to create a liter of slime, a hagfish has to release only 40 milligrams of mucus and protein—1,000 times less dry material than human saliva contains. That’s why the slime, though strong and elastic enough to coat a hand, feels so incorporeal.

Indeed, it’s one of the softest materials ever measured. “Jell-O is between 10,000 and 100,000 times stiffer than hagfish slime,” says Randy Ewoldt from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who had to invent new methods for assessing the substance’s properties after conventional instruments failed to cope with its nature. “When you see it in a bucket, it almost still looks like water. Only when you stick your hand in and pick it up do you find that it’s a coherent thing.”

The proteins threads that give the slime cohesion are incredible in their own right. Each is one-100th the width of a human hair, but can stretch for four to six inches. And within the slime glands, each thread is coiled like a ball of yarn within its own tiny cell—a feat akin to stuffing a kilometer of Christmas lights into a shoebox without a single knot or tangle. No one knows how the hagfish achieves this miracle of packaging, but Fudge just got a grant to test one idea. He thinks that the thread cells use their nuclei—the DNA-containing structures at their core—like a spindle, turning them to wind the growing protein threads into a single continuous loop.

Once these cells are expelled from the slime glands, they rupture, releasing the threads within them. Ewoldt’s colleague Gaurav Chaudhury found that despite their length, the threads can fully unspool in a fraction of a second. The pull of flowing water is enough to unwind them. But the process is even quicker if the loose end snags on a surface, like another thread, or a predator’s mouth.

Being extremely soft, the slime is very good at filling crevices, and scientists had long assumed that hagfish use it to clog the gills of would-be predators. That hypothesis was only confirmed in 2011, when Vincent Zintzen from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa finally captured footage of hagfish sliming conger eels, wreckfish, and more. Even a shark was forced to retreat, visibly gagging on the cloud of slime in its jaws.

“We were blown away by those videos,” Fudge says, “but when we really looked carefully, we noticed that the slime is released after the hagfish is bitten.” So how does the animal survive that initial attack? His colleague Sarah Boggett showed that the answer lies in their skin. It’s exceptionally loose, and attaches to the rest of the body at only a few places. It’s also very flaccid: You could inject a hagfish with an extra 40 percent of its body volume without stretching the skin. The animal is effectively wearing a set of extremely loose pajamas, Fudge says. If a shark bites down, “the body sort of squishes out of the way.”

That ability makes hagfish not only hard to bite, but also hard to defend against. Calli Freedman, another member of Fudge’s team, showed that these animals can wriggle through slits less than half the width of their bodies. In the wild, they use that ability to great effect. They can hunt live fish by pulling them out of sandy burrows. And if disturbed by predators, they can dive into the nearest nook they find. Perhaps that’s why, in 2013, the Italian researcher Daniela Silvia Pace spotted a bottlenose dolphin with a hagfish stuck in its blowhole.

More commonly, these creatures burrow into dead or dying animals, in search of flesh to scavenge. They can’t bite; instead, they rasp away at carcasses with a plate of toothy cartilage in their mouths. The same traveling knots they use to de-slime themselves also help them eat. They grab into a cadaver, then move a knot from tail to head, using the leverage to yank out mouthfuls of meat. They can also eat by simply sitting inside a corpse, and absorbing nutrients directly through their skin and gills. The entire hagfish is effectively a large gut, and even that is understating matters: Their skin is actually more efficient at absorbing nutrients than their own intestines.

Hagfish are so thoroughly odd that biologists have struggled to clearly work out how they’re related to other fish, and to the other backboned vertebrates. Based on their simple anatomy, many researchers billed the creatures as primitive precursors to vertebrates—an intermediate form that existed before the evolution of jaws and spinal columns.

But a new fossil called Tethymyxine complicates that story. Hailing from a Lebanese quarry, and purchased by researchers at a fossil show in Tucson, Arizona, the Cretaceous-age creature is clearly a hagfish. It has a raspy cartilage plate in its mouth, slime glands dotting its flanks, and even chemicals within those glands that match the composition of modern slime. By comparing Tethymyxine to other hagfish, Tetsuto Miyashita from the University of Chicago concluded that these creatures (along with another group of jawless fish, the lampreys) are not precursors to vertebrates, but actual vertebrates themselves.

Such work is always contentious, but it fits with the results of genetic studies. If it’s right, then hagfish aren’t primitive evolutionary throwbacks at all. Instead, they represent a lineage of vertebrates that diverged from all the others about 550 million years ago, and lost several traits such as complex eyes, taste buds, scales, and perhaps even bones. Maybe those losses were adaptations to a life spent infiltrating carcasses in the dark, deep ocean, much like their flaccid, nutrient-absorbing skins are. “Hagfishes might look primitive; they’re actually very specialized,” Miyashita adds.

Their signature slime might have also evolved as a result of that lifestyle, as a way of fending off predators that were competing for cadavers. “Everything about hagfish is weird,” says Fudge, “but it all kind of fits.”

Frilled Shark

The little-known, deepwater-dwelling Frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) is one of the most primitive living species of shark. The species name is Anguineus, which derives from the Latin for snakelike, which only partly conveys its bizarre appearance. Frilled sharks are also called living fossils because they’ve hardly changed over millions of years. One of the main reasons for their unchanging appearance is that they’ve completely adapted to deep-water habitat and at depths of about 1000 meters, there is hardly any competition from other sharks. Keep reading https://cedointercultural.org/‘s article to know all about this creatures.

Anatomy and appearance of the Frilled shark

The head of the Frilled shark is lizard-like, featuring a blunt-ended snout and a very large mouth armed with multiple rows of sharp, three-pronged teeth. While each tooth is relatively small, there are around 300 in total providing almost a thousand sharp hooks on which to trap struggling prey. Behind the head, on both sides of the body, there are six gill slits which each possess a distinctive frilly margin. The front slits on each side extend beneath the body, meeting under the throat, giving the appearance of a frilly collar. The body is dark brown or grey in color, with a large anal fin and small, paddle-shaped pectoral fins, while the dorsal fin is relatively small and set very far back on the body. The caudal fin has a small, vestigial lower lobe, while in contrast the upper lobe is very elongated and further extends the serpentine body.

Frilled shark habitat

Although the range of the Frilled shark extends almost worldwide, it has a very patchy distribution. Populations occur on the outer continental shelves and upper continental slopes off Norway, northern Scotland and western Ireland, and south as far as northern Namibia. Other populations occur in the eastern Pacific off southern California and northern Chile; in the west Pacific, off south-east Japan, eastern Australia and New Zealand; and also possibly in the western Indian Ocean, off South Africa. As a predominantly deep-water species, the Frilled shark typically lives close to the seabed or in the water column at depths between 500 and 1,000 meters, but may be found as deep as 1,500 meters. However, individuals are sometimes found higher in the water column at depths between 50 and 200 meters.

Frilled shark diet

Owing to its deep-water habitat, very few observations of the Frilled shark have been made in its natural environment. Analysis of stomach contents of Frilled sharks brought to the surface indicate that this species mostly preys on deep water squid and a variety of fish, including other sharks. Interestingly, this species has also been found higher in the water column at depths between 50 and 200 meters, where it feeds on faster-swimming squid. While it is unclear exactly how the Frilled shark feeds, its set of needle-sharp, inwardly-pointing teeth, and the fact that its jaws can open extremely wide, suggest that it may actively take prey over one and a half times its own length. Moreover, it is speculated that Frilled sharks use a snake-like approach in order to catch their prey.

Population of Frilled sharks

Frilled sharks are rarely observed in their natural habitat and therefore their population numbers are unknown. The Frilled shark like many other sharks is ovoviviparous, which means that after fertilization, the embryos develop within the female’s uterus, receiving nourishment from a yolk sac. Once the yolk sac nutrients are exhausted the embryos absorb nutrients from secretions within the uterus until birth takes place. The litter is very small, numbering only two to ten offspring which each measure between 40 and 60 centimeters in length. Studies of Frilled shark embryos indicate that this species could have a gestation period of over 3.5 years, which, if accurate, would be the longest known amongst the vertebrates.

Conservation of Frilled sharks

The frilled shark is classified as ‘Least Concern’ on the IUCN Red List.

Frilled sharks and humans

There have rarely been encounters between frilled sharks and humans. A Frilled shark was first seen in its natural habitat by humans in 2004, but was not caught on video until 2007 when one was caught by fishermen in Japan.

16 creatures from the bottom of the ocean that will give you nightmares

The frilled shark is a “living fossil” — a species that has retained some of the features of its primitive ancestors.

With its grisly appearance, the frilled shark is an example of a “living fossil,” an extant animal whose appearance has not evolved much through the millennia. The term can also apply to creatures that have few or no close surviving relatives.

What’s most unusual about this prehistoric-looking predator, which is endemic to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is the way it reproduces. In other mammal species, embryos are nourished via a placenta. However, frilled shark embryos obtain energy from yolk sacs and mothers only give birth once their offspring are capable of surviving on their own.

Growing upto 7 feet long, frilled sharks primarily prey on squid. They’ve also been known to feed on fish — and even other sharks.

Hagfish are known for their repulsive feeding habits: Lacking jaws, they consume the decaying carcasses of other sea creatures by burrowing into them with tooth-like structures.

There are estimated to be 76 species of hagfish — and some live as deep as 5,500 feet below the water’s surface. They are also known as slime eels because of the goop their bodies produce to ward off predators.

Scientists estimate that there are 76 species of hagfish, which can grow to be between 16 and 40 inches long. Some live as deep as 5,600 feet below the water’s surface.

The Atlantic wolffish is a predatory species characterized by a mouth full of sharp, canine-like teeth.

A predatory species that feeds on hard-bodied or spiny invertebrates like sea urchins and large marine snails, this creature is not aggressive towards humans unless provoked.

You’ll find the Atlantic wolffish, which can grow up to five feet long, in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Preferring chillier water, it lives at depths ranging from 328 feet to 1,640 feet.

With its lengthy, eel-like body, this fish is also known as a wolf eel. Keep reading to know more about deep sea fishes in https://cedointercultural.org/‘s article.

The goblin shark has 50 teeth in its mouth.

You can identify goblin sharks — a rare, bottom-dwelling species — by the shape of their snouts, which are elongated and flattened.

With 50 teeth in their mouths, these gruesome creatures command attention.

Interestingly, female goblin sharks are larger in adulthood than the males of the species. Females can be a maximum of 11 inches long, while males grow to be an average length of 8.66 inches.

The Japanese spider crab can weigh up to 44 pounds.

Native to the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese spider crab grows up to 15 inches wide and weighs up to 44 pounds. It’s one of the largest known arthropods, a group of invertebrate animals that also includes lobsters, spiders, and insects.

The vampire squid’s scientific name, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, means “vampire squid from hell.”

In Latin, the name of this cephalopod — which is neither a squid nor an octopus — is even more sinister. Its scientific name, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, means “vampire squid from hell.”

But the vampire squid, found in the inky depths of the mesopelagic zone (about 3,300 feet below the ocean’s surface), is gentler than its appellation indicates. Unlike its namesake, it doesn’t feed on blood. Instead, this creature subsists on “marine snow,” decaying organic material that falls to the ocean floor — kind of like the dead leaves that litter forests.

The anglerfish is most famous for the bioluminescent growth on its head, which lures prey to its death.

The anglerfish, possibly one of the world’s ugliest creatures, is most famous for the bioluminescent growth on its head, which lures prey to its death at the the lightless bottom of the ocean.

However, there are more than 200 species of anglerfish, divided into four groups: goosefish, batfish, frogfish, and deep-sea angler. Only females possess the iconic, bioluminescent angling apparatus. Most live at the bottom of the Atlantic and Antarctic Oceans, sometimes as far as a mile below the surface.

Due to their long, tapered bodies, grenadiers are better known as “rattails.”

There are about 300 species of grenadiers, a large-headed fish found in warm and temperate waters.

Due to their long, tapered bodies, these rodent-like creatures are better known as “rat-tails.”

This ghoulish-looking creature is aptly named ghost shark, or chimaera.

Like sharks and rays, the ghoulish chimaera is a type of cartilaginous fish. It also bears an uncanny resemblance to Zero, the dog from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Inhabiting temperate to cold waters around the world, chimera live at depths of 8,200 feet or more. There are about 47 species, which range in length from 24 to 80 inches.

Archaeological evidence has proven that chimera have been around for millions of years. The earliest fossil specimen, a skull, was dated to about 280 million years ago. It was unearthed in South Africa in the 1980s.

The sarcastic fringehead is a tube blenny, a fish that burrows in narrow structures created by other creatures.

Native to the northeast Pacific Ocean near California and Baja California, the sarcastic fringehead is a kind of tube blenny, a type of small fish that burrows in tube-like structures created by other creatures.

Sarcastic fringeheads primarily gorge on squid eggs, but scientists believe that the males’ oversized mouths may impede upon their ability to feed.

The barreleye, also known as a spook fish, has extremely light-sensitive eyes on the top of its fluid-filled head.

The barreleye was first described in 1939, but remained a mystery to scientists until 2009, when they discovered that its large, tubular eyes could actually rotate inside of its head. This rotational ability allows them to look upward for potential prey or face forward to see what it is eating.

Since barreleyes live at such depths where there is hardly any light, their tubular eyes help them use whatever faint amounts of light drift down to them. They also have two spots above their mouths which are called nares, analogous to human nostrils.

As the name suggests, the faceless cusk eel has no face.

Like Dementors of the fish world, these eels don’t have a face.

Almost four years ago, Australian researchers found a faceless cusk an incredible 13,000 feet below the water’s surface. Expedition leader Dr. Tim O’Hara of Australia’s Museums Victoria told the Guardian, “It looks like two rear ends on a fish, really.”

Apparently its mouth sits underneath the rest of its body, and is “protrusible,” meaning it extends to catch food, and then disappears back inside of its own body.

Oceanographers aboard the HMS Challenger collected the first specimen of the species in 1873, which was the last time one was ever seen.

The blobfish was named the “world’s ugliest animal” in an online poll.

Named the “world’s ugliest animal” in an online poll conducted by a British organization called the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, the blobfish belongs to the fathead sculpin family — a group of fish that dwells in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans at depths ranging from 330 to 9,200 feet.

While most fish stay buoyant with the aid of a swim bladder, blobfish — whose bodies are less dense than water — utilize the ocean itself as a floating mechanism.

The most famous blobfish, Mr. Blobby, was discovered in 2003 off the coast of New Zealand and has inspired everything from plush toys to emoji. Preserved in ethyl alcohol, Mr. Blobby’s final resting place is at the Australian Museum in Sydney.

The highfin lizardfish grows to a maximum size of 2.5 feet.

This toothy fella is found at depths of more than 3,200 feet, and has been spotted in Africa between Morocco and Gabon and in Europe between Northern Ireland and the Mediterranean Sea.

Deepsea lizardfish — whose sharp teeth and large mouths come in handy for catching prey on the ocean floor — can grow to be more than two feet long.

Bougainvillia superciliaris look like glowing, mini jellyfish

These bioluminescent sea creatures create their own light in the darkness. They either live solitary lives or in colonies, and eat through filter-feeding.

The slender snipe eel can grow to be at least 4 feet long, but it weighs only a few ounces.

The slender snipe eel, one of the most compact deep-sea critters, can grow to a minimum length of four feet, but weighs no more than 6 or 7 ounces.

Scientists aren’t entirely sure how this eel catches its prey, but they speculate that the process involves the creature using its beak-like mouth to capture food.

Research also suggests that slender snipes spawn once and then die. They reproduce through a process known as broadcast spawning in which female and males respectively release eggs and sperm into the water column at the same time.

8 Facts About the Sea Bunny Slug

Ready to learn about one of the cutest sea creatures of all time? Meet the sea bunny! While this animal’s scientific name is Jorunna parva, it has been dubbed the sea bunny slug due to its resemblance to a fluffy white bunny rabbit.

What is a sea bunny?

Sea bunnies are actually a species of sea slug, or nudibranch, and were first described by renowned Japanese marine biologist Kikutaro Baba. Long before sea bunnies became quite the viral video sensation in 2015, these unique ocean animals have been hippity-hopping around the waters of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. To spot a sea bunny underwater, you’ll have to look very closely, as they are typically less than one inch long.

Want to learn more about these little “furry” friends? Here are https://cedointercultural.org/‘s eight fascinating sea bunny facts.

1. That’s Not a Fur Coat

Sea bunny anatomy can be a little deceptive. First off, the white fur coat you see on these sea slugs can actually range in color from yellow to orange to even brown. Secondly, it’s definitely not fur. What you’re looking at are groups of small rods known as caryophyllidia covering the nudibranch’s back. These are arranged around small black specks that give the sea bunny its spotted look. Most experts believe that these organs play a sensory role.

2. Sea Bunny Ears Are Actually Sensory Organs

The two little “ears” that make these sea creatures look like bunnies are actually sensory organs called rhinophores. They help the sea bunny to detect chemical scents in the water column, allowing them to find food and also potential mates. In the world of nudibranchs, sea bunny rhinophores are particularly “fuzzy”, providing more surface area for reception to occur. In fact, sea bunnies are effective at detecting scents over surprisingly large distances—especially considering how small they are.

3. Sea Bunnies Are Hermaphrodites

Like all nudibranchs, sea bunnies are hermaphrodites, meaning that they have both male and female reproductive organs. They mate by both exchanging sperm with one another to fertilize their eggs. Therefore, they are both mother to their own children and the father of someone else’s, while both their offspring are direct siblings.

4. Predators Don’t Like Their Toxins

Predators stay away from these cute little slugs because they are incredibly toxic. Just how poisonous are sea bunnies? Well, that depends on their diet. The sea bunny slug belongs to a group of sea slugs called dorid nudibranchs, which steal toxic defenses from their food. They often eat food like sponges that contain toxins.

5. A Sea Bunny Lifespan is Short

The average lifespan of a sea bunny slug is only a couple of months to a year. Because of their short lifespan and typically isolated lifestyle, mating is not guaranteed and must be taken advantage of when the opportunity arises. This is also why it’s so important they have such a well-developed sensory system to be able to locate one another.

6. Sea Bunnies Are What They Eat

Unlike their land-based namesakes, sea bunnies are carnivores that like to snack on other sea slugs or sea snails. They also use a special feeding organ (called a radula) to scrape off and eat algae from ocean surfaces. However, toxic sea sponges make up the majority of a sea bunny diet. As well as retaining the toxins for their own defense, these sea slugs also absorb the pigments and will change appearance based on what they eat.

7. Sea Bunnies Start Out Life With a Shell

After hatching, the free-swimming larva of a sea bunny has a shell—a characteristic common to all mollusks. Eventually, during a process called metamorphosis, it sheds this protective layer and emerges as the bunny-like sea slug we know and love. This transformation is the same for all nudibranchs, whose name aptly means “naked gills”.

8. Sea Bunnies Are Part of a Bigger, Fascinating Family

The sea bunny species is part of the family Discodorididae, which in turn belongs to the order Nudibranchia. It’s a huge family, with around 3,000 known nudibranchs. Many other types of sea slugs are just as weird and wonderful as their cute sea bunny cousins. For example, there are blue dragons, flamenco-like Spanish dancers, suitably named “leaf sheep“, and even one that runs on solar power!

10 of the Largest Living Creatures in the Sea

The largest living things in the world call the sea their home, and in fact, the largest creature to have ever lived on the planet currently resides in the ocean. Some of these creatures remain elusive and wildly mysterious. That’s what happens when you live in a place as unexplored as the ocean. And that’s also why it has been especially difficult to nail down the size of certain sea creatures. At least it was until a group of scientific researchers embarked on a comprehensive survey and review of past studies for the largest known marine species. Here https://cedointercultural.org/ is what they found.

Lion’s Mane Jellyfish | Total Length: 120 Feet (36.6 Meters)

While the blue whale is the overall-largest creature of the sea, the lion’s mane jellyfish goes to the top of the list for being the longest. These languid beauties have tentacles that reach an astonishing 120 feet in length. It’s hard to know why they are graced with such extraordinary appendages. They are said to get tangled in marine debris or with other tentacles, and as they take notably more time to contract, they are more vulnerable to predators with a taste for jellyfish arms. That said, their long main of poison-equipped tentacles makes an excellent trap for prey.

Blue Whale | Total Length: 108.27 Feet (33 Meters)

Most of us have seen photos of a glorious, gigantic blue whale; but without something to show scale, it’s hard to fathom just how tremendous they are in size. The blue whale is the largest animal ever known to have existed — even out-sizing dinosaurs. They weigh up to 441,000 pounds. Their hearts are the size of a car; their heartbeats can be detected from two miles away. At birth, they already rank amongst the largest full-grown animals. Because of commercial whaling, the species almost went extinct by the 20th century. Thankfully, it has slowly recovered following the global whaling ban. That said, there are fewer than 25,000 individuals left. These animals remain endangered and face a number of serious threats including ship strikes and the impacts of climate change.

Sperm Whale | Total Length: 78.74 Feet (24 Meters)

At almost 80 feet in length, the beautiful sperm whale happens to be the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator of all. If you were to place it on its end and put it on the street, it would be as tall as an eight-story building. Its clicking call can be as loud as 230 decibels underwater, equivalent to 170 decibels on land— about the loudness of a rifle shot within a few feet of one’s ear. It has the largest brain of any animal on the planet, tipping the scales at around 20 pounds. Unfortunately for the sperm whale, they were fiercely hunted in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Whalers sought the spermaceti — a waxy substance found in cavities in the whale’s head — which was used for candles, soap, cosmetics, lamp oil, and many other commercial applications. Before whaling, there were an estimated 1.1 million sperm whales. Today, there are several hundred thousand — which may be a lot compared to other whales in peril, but still disheartening given their once abundant population.

Whale Shark | Total Length: 61.68 Feet (18.8 Meters)

Meet the largest fish in the sea, the beautiful whale shark. These majestic giants roam the oceans across the planet, looking for plankton and doing other things that fish do — sometimes even playing with people who love to swim with them. At 60 feet in length, if you run into a whale shark, you’re unlikely to miss this friendly creature. If the shark’s size doesn’t get your attention, the distinct light and dark markings should.9 More whale than shark, these fish are listed as endangered as they are still hunted in some parts of the world.

Basking Shark | Total Length: 40.25 Feet (12.27 Meters)

The basking shark is, to the best of our knowledge, the second largest fish in the modern ocean. The largest one on record measured in at over 40 feet — about the length of a school bus. And even more impressively, they can weigh in the range of 8,500 pounds. The basking shark is often seen with its enormous snout open wide near the water’s surface. But not to worry should you come across one while taking a dip in the ocean; they are gentle giants with a diet of mostly plankton, fish eggs, and larvae.

Giant Squid | Total Length: 39.37 Feet (12 Meters)

Taking the prize for being the longest cephalopod is the giant squid.12 Scientists have had few opportunities to observe the incredibly elusive animals in their natural habitat. The first time a giant squid was filmed in its deep-sea home was in 2012 by a group of scientists from Japan’s National Science Museum. What we have learned about this enormous cephalopod is that it has quite a reach. Their feeding tentacles can catch prey at distances of over 30 feet. The giant squid is also legendary in the realm of sea monster tales where it has been associated with the sea monster Kraken.

Giant Pacific Octopus | Radial Spread: 32.15 Feet (9.8 Meters)

The aptly named giant Pacific octopus is the biggest cephalopod of all. This oversized octopus has a radial spread of more than 32 feet. Though typically reddish brown, the octopus can change its color when threatened or in need of camouflage.13 Intelligent by nature, the giant Pacific octopus can open jars, solve mazes, and play with toys. Aquariums often have enrichment activities for the octopuses to engage their brains. In the wild, the giant Pacific octopus is found throughout the Pacific from Alaska to Baja California, and as far northeast as Japan.

Oarfish | Total Length: 26.25 Feet (8 Meters)

The decidedly odd shaped oarfish is often referred to as a sea serpent or dragon. These guys are long — the longest bony fish that we know of — and live at depths of 3,300 feet. Because they reside in the deep dark water columns of the open ocean and rarely come to the surface, they are not often seen alive and healthy. Most of our knowledge comes from specimens that have washed ashore. Oarfish, also known as ribbonfish, are long — 26 feet — and do not have scales. They are also known for their large eyes, all the better to see in their deep, dark habitat.

Ocean Sunfish | Total Length: 10.82 Feet (3.3 Meters)

Also known as a mola mola, the wonderfully weird ocean sunfish is the heaviest of all bony fish.14 Affectionately called a “swimming head,” the giant fish without a tail has been measured at 10.82 feet and an astonishing 5,070 pounds. And if you’re wondering how a fish without a tail swims, it powers itself by its mighty fins. These fins also allow them to swim on their side. Generally a solitary fish, ocean sunfish are sometimes found in groups when cleaning. Ocean sunfish have a diet consisting mainly of jellyfish and zooplankton. Their predators include sharks and sea lions.

Japanese Spider Crab | Leg Span: 12.14 Feet (3.7 Meters)

With a leg span of over 12 feet, the Japanese spider crab is an arthropod, from the same phylum that includes crustaceans, spiders, and insects. And it is not only the largest crab or crustacean in the family, but it also holds the title for the largest living arthropod of all. As the Japanese spider crab ages, its legs continue to grow while its carapace remains the same size. Juvenile Japanese spider crabs are known to decorate their shells for camouflage.

How much of the ocean has been explored? Surprisingly little

The oceans have enthralled humanity for millennia. Since the dawn of time, we have traversed the blue horizons in a quest for new nations and adventures. Throughout history, the oceans have been an essential source of survival, transportation, commerce, growth, and motivation.

We know that the oceans comprise over 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and are the planet’s largest ecosystem, holding 99 percent of all habitable space.

Better yet, we have even successfully located some of their mysterious underwater structures, such as the 7-mile-deep Mariana Trench, Earth’s deepest locality, and the Bermuda triangle. And let’s remember the discoveries of whole submerged cities, such as the 5000-year-old Palvopetri in Greece, which may have been submerged around 1,000 BC.

Still, despite our best efforts, the scale of the oceans and what lies within them continues to be somewhat incomprehensible. In truth, we might already be more familiar with the universe than our oceans; “We have better maps of the surface of Mars and the moon than we do of the bottom of the ocean,” said NASA‘s oceanographer Dr. Gene Feldman.

In this https://cedointercultural.org/‘s article, Interesting Engineering (IE) explains just how much of the oceans we have explored.

How many oceans are there?

Our Earth is unique in the solar system. Its optimal distance from the Sun and the predominance of liquid on its surface and atmosphere contribute to this.

Over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface lies below a large saltwater body- the global ocean. However, scientists have categorically divided the body of water into four major oceans; the Great Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic. And as of recently, there is now a fifth!

On June 8, 2021, National Geographic, which has been making maps since 1915, recognized a fifth ocean called the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica.

All oceans collectively contain an estimated 97 percent of the world’s water.

How much of the ocean has been explored?

Despite modern technologies, only 5 percent of the oceans have been explored. As such, the remaining 95 percent remains untouched, unseen, and undiscovered to date.

Marine life

Regarding marine species, scientists have yet to discover how many exist in the oceans. Currently, around 226,000 ocean species are known. Some believe many ocean species are declining due to marine ecosystems suffering from rising sea temperatures, pollution, and other issues.

That said, scientists are always finding new living species, and it is estimated that a few hundred thousand to a few million more species are yet to be discovered.

Better yet, over the last decades, oceans have been an incredible source of information about the evolution of the animal kingdom. From the largest shark to ever live – the prehistoric megalodon – to the modern tubeworms of the extreme, deep-sea environment, ocean exploration has revealed that life on Earth has changed remarkably since it first began evolving.

Ancient civilizations

Ocean exploration has also been key to uncovering significant ancient human secrets. For instance, the Antikythera mechanism, which could be the world’s first computer and was created in 100 BC (2,122 years ago), was found in a shipwreck in 1901.

Plenty of ancient civilizations whose cities now lie underwater have also been explored, such as Palvopetri in Greece. At 5000 years old, this submerged city is considered the oldest of its kind on Earth. For thousands of years, the town was buried right beneath our eyes until a young oceanographer found its walls just three to four meters below the sea’s surface.

A history of ocean exploration

The study of all aspects of oceans is termed oceanography. Modern oceanography is one of the more recent additions to scientific disciplines. Still, its roots can be traced back tens of thousands of years to when people first started traveling out to sea in rafts and exploring their coastlines.

6022 years ago (c. 4000 BC)- first sailing vessels

In ancient Egypt, close to the mouth of the Nile River, some of the earliest sailing ships were probably made solely for travel in the Mediterranean Sea.

In fact, a discovery in 1994 of a ceramic shard dating to c. 3000 BC (c.5,022 years ago), suggests the ocean was already being traversed for trade between ancient Egypt and Greece. The shard was revealed to be a fragment of a wine jar exported from the Nile Valley to Palestine. Since the wine was almost impossible to produce in the Egyptian climate, it probably came from Greece – indicating trade links between Greece and Egypt.

Around 3000 BC- First tide dock of the world

At the port town of Lothal, the Harappans (or Indus Civilization) built the first tide dock in history for berthing and servicing ships.

2,922 years ago (c. 900 BC) – The first sea routes

The ancient Phoenicians- an ancient civilization of the eastern Mediterranean – were skilled navigators who pioneered sea routes around the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and may have traveled the Indian Ocean as well.

Some believe that these early mariners may have traveled as far as England.

Around 900 AD – Viking ocean exploration

Vikings began measuring sea depth around the eighth century by throwing lead weights attached to ropes overboard. They’d then note how much of the rope was submerged when the weight hit bottom.

As masterful ocean navigators, the Vikings were among the first explorers to use the North Star to keep their course while at sea. This expertise enabled them to travel and colonize many territories, including Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland.

As highlighted in a previous IE story, tree rings and astrophysics suggest Vikings beat Christoper Columbus (discussed below) to the discovery of North America by around 500 years.

Around 1405- Chinese exploration

The Chinese set out on seven voyages consisting of a fleet of over 300. This was meant to project power in Asia, as opposed to “discovering” new areas.

Late 1400s-1500s

Explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) and his crew made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498, and 1502. Guided by the view that the Earth is round, Columbus argued that he could sail west to reach “the east” (India and China). Of course, we all know he stumbled across the Americas instead.

Furthermore, in 1519 Ferdinand Magellan and his crew set out from Portugal on a perilous journey that would eventually lead to the first circumnavigation of the globe. Although, as IE previously highlighted, when Megallan achieved this is under debate.

Modern Oceanography – from the late 19th century

Modern oceanography emerged as a scientific discipline less than 130 years ago- in the late nineteenth century, several expeditions launched by Americans, Britians, and Europeans enabled the exploration of ocean currents, ecosystems, and the seafloor off their coasts.

For instance, the Challenger expedition, which took place from 1872 to 1876 aboard the British three-masted HMS Challenger, was the first to collect information on ocean temperatures, chemistry, currents, life, and seafloor geology.

Later, in 1951, the HMS Challenger II used sonar to discover the ocean’s deepest point (10,929 meters) in the Mariana Trench, the Pacific Ocean. This came to be known as the ‘Challenger deep.’

Almost 150 years after the first Challenger expedition, another expedition called the “Five Deeps”, visited the deepest point in each of the Earth’s five oceans.

The other four ‘deeps’ were the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean (27,480 feet/8,376 meters), South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean (24,390 feet/7,434 meters), Java Trench in the Indian Ocean (23,917 feet/7,290 meters), and Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean (18,284 feet/5,573 meters).

After the Titanic sank in 1912, technological efforts to solve problems of early warning of underwater obstructions were made to prevent such a tragedy from reoccurring. One of which was Reginald A. Fessenden’s 1914 ‘Fessenden Oscillator,’ which could detect underwater objects by bouncing sound waves between the objects and the sea floor.

This invention could also be used to detect the depth of the ocean. Additionally, it paved the way for creating what we know today as sonar.

1995- Mapping the seafloor from space

Geosat satellite radar altimetry data lead to detailed worldwide mapping of the sea floor from space.

2017 – Mapping global ocean depth

Seabed 2030 is a new international initiative to gather all available bathymetric (underwater depth) data and make a definitive, publically-available map of the world’s ocean floor by 2030.

How deep is the ocean?

Even though there is still much to discover, oceanographers have made some incredible findings. For instance, we are aware that, like on land, the ocean is home to trenches and towering mountain ranges.

If Mount Everest, which stands 8.84 kilometers (5.49 miles) tall, were placed in the Mariana or Philippine Trenches of the Pacific Ocean, two of the ocean’s deepest regions, its peak would not even touch the surface of the water.

Conversely, the Atlantic Ocean is comparatively shallow because a large portion of its seafloor is made up of continental shelves, which are portions of the continents that extend far out into the ocean. The overall average ocean depth is 2.3 miles (3,720 meters).

Why is it complicated to explore the ocean?

You’re probably wondering why 95 percent of the ocean has been unexplored.

There is no doubt that satellites can map the ocean’s surface temperatures, waters, turbidity, color, etc. Still, we need far more technological advances, such as deep sea submarines and sonars, to map its deeper parts. In addition, deep water makes it difficult to see.

Extreme exploration conditions at great depths contribute to the relatively small percentage of the ocean explored. The “sunlight zone” ends about 200 meters beneath the surface, making imaging much more complex. Additionally, the pressure at depth is exceptionally high, increasing about one atmosphere for every 10 meters of water depth. At a depth of 5,000 meters, the pressure is around 500 atmospheres or 500 times greater than the pressure at sea level.

The good news is that scientists are developing a range of undersea exploration vehicles, including ‘biorobots’ that can explore the depths difficult for humans to reach.

Why did NASA stop exploring the ocean?

Though there are many rumors about NASA exploring oceans in the beginning and then suddenly quitting it – there is no real evidence for this.

Since 1958 to now (2022), NASA’s primary objective has been air and space exploration. However, NASA does assist various other organizations that work solely to examine and survey the oceans, such as the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Further, several viral TikTok videos have led to several conspiracy theories, including one that described NASA as dropping out of ocean exploration due to discovering a somewhat deadly ‘massive unknown species.’ Apparently, it was so horrific that NASA started researching outer space to try and get humans off Earth.

Still, as interesting as the story may sound, it’s just that- a story.

The truth is that as ocean exploration technology develops, the amount of knowledge yet to be discovered is as vast as the immenseness of the oceans.

10 Strange Animals in the Mariana Trench

The Mariana Trench is in the western Pacific Ocean, around 200 kilometers, or 124 miles, from the Mariana Islands. The trench is the deepest point in the worlds’ oceans.

The Mariana Trench reaches 1,580 miles and 2,550 kilometers and a maximum width of 69 kilometers or 43 miles. The maximum known depth is 10,984 meters or 36,037 feet. The water pressure at the bottom of the trench is incredible, more than 1,071 times the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level. Living in this excellent habitat are some of the world’s most exciting and surprising animals. Explore a few of them in this https://cedointercultural.org/‘s article below.

Dumbo Octopus

The deepest known living octopus

The dumbo octopus, also known as grimpotheuthis, is a genus of pelagic umbrella octopuses. The name originates from the creature’s resemblance to the character Dumbo from the 1941 Disney film of the same name. The Dumbo octopus was first discovered around 1883, but the first specimen was not seen until the 1990s after the first deep-sea submersible vessels were invented.

The dumbo octopus is small compared to other octopods, averaging between 20 and 30 centimeters. The octopus’s gelatinous body allows it to exist at the highly pressured depths it prefers. Extreme pressure keeps its body together, and if brought to the surface, its body would not be able to work correctly.

Angler Fish

It has a bright lure on the end of its head to lure prey

The angler fish is a well-known marine creature thanks to the success of the film Finding Nemo. It’s a reasonably famous creature that’s quite distinctive due to the light protruding from its head. It has an unusually shaped body and sharp teeth. The females usually grow to around 8 inches long, and the males to only an inch in length. The males fuse themselves with the females, turning two individuals into one.

Frilled Shark

Species is more than 80 million years old

The frilled shark was discovered in the 19th century by German ichthyologist Ludwig H.P. Döderlein. It is often referred to as a “living fossil” due to its eery appearance and the shape of its mouth.

The shark has an eel-like body that’s dark brown to grey in color and amphistyly, referring to the articulation of the jaws to the head. Their teeth are widely spaced between 19 and 28 in the upper jaw and 21 to 29 in the lower jaw.

They live near the ocean floor, such as in and around the Mariana Trench, and near biologically productive areas.

Goblin Shark

Still unclear what the unusual snout is for

The goblin shark is a rare species of shark. Its unusual and “creepy” appearance is often described as fossil-like (similar to the frilled shark). It has pink-toned skin and a distinctive snout shape. It is elongated and flat with a protruding jaw and skinny, incredibly sharp teeth.

They can grow to be around 10-13 feet in length and are rarely seen by human beings. This is mostly due to the fact that they live so deep in the ocean, around 100 meters or 330 feet.

Telescope Octopus

A transparent octopus with tubular eyes

The telescope octopus is a transparent, eight-armed octopus that is almost entirely colorless. Their arms are the same size, and they are the only octopus to have tubular eyes. It is incredibly unusual to observe and was originally documented by Dr. William Evans Hoyle in 1885. The octopus is a rare species, meaning there is little that scientists, and the general public, know about the marine creature. But it’s believed to be a close relative of the glass octopus.

Zombie Worms

Target the fat that is inside the bone to eat

Zombie worms, also known as Osedax, are a type of deep-sea siboglinid polychaetes. The word “Osedax” means “bone-eater” in Latin and refers to the worm’s ability to bore into and eat bones from whale carcasses. They do so in an attempt to reach lipids enclosed inside the bone. They use special root tissues for bone boring.

Barreleye Fish

It has a transparent skull to see potential predators above it

The Barreleye Fish is another interesting deep-sea creature. They are also sometimes known as spook fish and are found in the temperate waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. The fish are named for the shape of their eyes, which look like tubes or barrels. They are directed upwards in order to allow the fish to detect prey more easily.

Deep-sea Dragonfish

A very small deep-sea apex predator

The Deep-sea Dragonfish, also known as the scaleless dragonfish, is a deep-sea predator. It, like the angler fish, produces its own light. They have large teeth, especially compared to their size. The fish are only six inches long, but they have a dragon-like feature that makes them appear as a vicious predator. It creates its light through a process known as bioluminescence. The light is created through the animal’s photophore. The fish uses it to attract prey and potential mates.

Sea Cucumber

Make up the vast majority of sea life on the deep-sea floor, and breathe through their anus

The sea cucumber is a small echinoderm from the class Holothuroidea. They are marina animals with leather-textured skin. Their bodies are long and found on the seafloor around the world. There are around 1,700 species of holothurian around the world, but most are concentrated around the Asian Pacific region. Some of these live in the depths of the Mariana Trench.

They are named for their shape, which clearly resembles a cucumber. Sometimes, sea cucumbers are gathered for human consumption, but they play an important role in marine ecosystems. They break down detritus and other matter, cleaning their ecosystems.

Snailfish

An incredibly deep-sea fish that is scaleless would implode if it goes to the surface

Snailfish are an unusual and interesting species that live in the Arctic to Antarctic Oceans. There are more than 410 species of snailfish known to science. But there are other undescribed species. They live in depths ranging from the surface to 26,200 feet or around 8,000 meters. Unfortunately, snailfish are uncommonly studied, and little is known about their lives or habits. They are scaleless, though, with loose skin. Their teeth are small, and they have prominent sensory pores on their heads.

FAQs

Do any animals live in the Mariana Trench?

Yes, many different animals live in the Mariana Trench. Most of these are rarely seen by human beings and have different, interesting attributes.

Is the Mariana Trench toxic?

Deep in the Mariana Trench, there are still examples of human-caused pollution. For example, scientists have discovered mercury pollution there.

Does Megalodon exist in Mariana Trench?

It is very unlikely that Megalodon still exists. But, if it did, it would live in the upper part of the water over the trench rather than in its depths.

10 Unbelievable Facts About the Ocean

The climate crisis has given us all a renewed appreciation for our planet’s oceans and the marine life that lives beneath the water’s surface, as well as ocean conservation projects led by initiatives like https://cedointercultural.org/. These 10 unbelievable ocean facts illustrate just how important these initiatives are.

1. Our oceans cover more than 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface.

With so much of the Earth’s surface taken up by ocean, it’s evident how vital these marine environments are to the planet, and how much there still is to be explored.

2. The majority of life on Earth is aquatic.

As so much of the Earth’s surface is underwater, it comes as no surprise that marine species outnumber those on land. But, it’s an incredible 94 per cent of the Earth’s living species that exist within the oceans.

3. Less than five per cent of the planet’s oceans have been explored.

According to the Ocean Service, man has explored less than five per cent of Earth’s oceans. As researchers strive to discover more, we’re continually getting to know our oceans better.

4. The world’s longest mountain chain is underwater.

Earth’s longest chain of mountains, the Mid-Ocean Ridge, is almost entirely beneath the ocean, stretching across a distance of 65,000 kilometres. It’s said that this mountain chain is less explored than the surface of Venus or Mars.

5. There are more historic artefacts under the sea than in all of the world’s museums.

Around 1,000 shipwrecks lie off the Florida Keys alone, some of which are within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Other underwater museums have been created in recent years, including the Mediterranean’s submerged bronze statue, Christ of the Abyss.

6. We still only know a fraction of the marine species in our oceans.

According to the World Register of Marine Species there are now 240,470 accepted species, but this is believed to be just a small proportion of the species that exist, with new marine life being discovered everyday.

7. Over 70 per cent of our planet’s oxygen is produced by the ocean.

It’s thought that between 70 and 80 per cent of the oxygen we breathe is produced by marine plants, nearly all of which are marine algae.

8. It’s possible to find rivers and lakes beneath the ocean.

When salt water and hydrogen sulfide combine, it becomes denser than the rest of the water around it, enabling it to form a lake or river that flows beneath the sea.

9. Around 50 per cent of the US lies beneath the ocean.

Not only does a large part of the planet exist beneath the ocean, so does the United States – around 50 per cent, in fact.

10. The Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest ocean and contains around 25,000 islands.

With 25,000 islands lying within it, the Pacific Ocean has more islands than anywhere else on the planet.

THE MARIANA TRENCH

While thousands of climbers have successfully scaled Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, only two people have descended to the planet’s deepest point, the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench.

Located in the western Pacific east of the Philippines and an average of approximately 124 miles (200 kilometers) east of the Mariana Islands, the Mariana Trench is a crescent-shaped scar in the Earth’s crust that measures more than 1,500 miles (2,550 kilometers) long and 43 miles (69 kilometers) wide on average. The distance between the surface of the ocean and the trench’s deepest point—the Challenger Deep, which lies about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of the U.S. territory of Guam—is nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers). If Mount Everest were dropped into the Mariana Trench, its peak would still be more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) underwater.

The Mariana Trench is part of a global network of deep troughs that cut across the ocean floor. They form when two tectonic plates collide. At the collision point, one of the plates dives beneath the other into the Earth’s mantle, creating an ocean trench.

The depths of the Mariana Trench were first plumbed in 1875 by the British ship H.M.S. Challenger as part of the first global oceanographic cruise. The Challenger scientists recorded a depth of 4,475 fathoms (about five miles, or eight kilometers) using a weighted sounding rope. In 1951, the British vessel H.M.S. Challenger II returned to the spot with an echo-sounder and measured a depth of nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers).

The majority of the Mariana Trench is now a U.S. protected zone as part of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, established by President George W. Bush in 2009. Permits for research in the monument, including in the Sirena Deep, have been secured from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Permits for research in the Challenger Deep have been secured from the Federated States of Micronesia.

HISTORIC DIVE

Because of its extreme depth, the Mariana Trench is cloaked in perpetual darkness and the temperature is just a few degrees above freezing. The water pressure at the bottom of the trench is a crushing eight tons per square inch—or about a thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. Pressure increases with depth.

The first and only time humans descended into the Challenger Deep was more than 50 years ago. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and Navy Lt. Don Walsh reached this goal in a U.S. Navy submersible, a bathyscaphe called the Trieste. After a five-hour descent, the pair spent only a scant 20 minutes at the bottom and were unable to take any photographs due to clouds of silt stirred up by their passage.

Until Piccard and Walsh’s historic dive, scientists had debated whether life could exist under such extreme pressure. But at the bottom, the Trieste‘s floodlight illuminated a creature that Piccard thought was a flatfish, a moment that Piccard would later describe with excitement in a book about his journey.

“Here, in an instant, was the answer that biologists had asked for the decades,” Piccard wrote. “Could life exist in the greatest depths of the ocean? It could!”

WAITING IN THE DEEP

While the Trieste expedition laid to rest any doubts that life could exist in the Mariana Trench, scientists still know very little about the types of organisms that reside there. In fact, some question whether Piccard’s fish was actually a form of sea cucumber. It is thought that the pressure is so great that calcium can’t exist except in solution, so the bones of vertebrates would literally dissolve. No bones, no fish. But nature has also proven scientists wrong many times in the past with its remarkable capacity for adaptation. So are there fish that deep? Nobody knows, and this is the whole point of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project, to find answers to such fundamental questions in this website https://cedointercultural.org/.

In recent years, deep-ocean dredges and unmanned subs have glimpsed exotic organisms such as shrimp-like amphipods, and strange, translucent animals called holothurians. But scientists say there are many new species awaiting discovery and many unanswered questions about how animals can survive in these extreme conditions. Scientists are particularly interested in microorganisms living in the trenches, which they say could lead to breakthroughs in biomedicine and biotechnology.

The Mariana Trench’s microscopic inhabitants might even shed light on the emergence of life on Earth. Some researchers, such as Patricia Fryer et alat University of Hawaii, have speculated that serpentine mud volcanoes located near ocean trenches might have provided the right conditions for our planet’s first life-forms. Additionally, studying rocks from ocean trenches could lead to a better understanding of the earthquakes that create the powerful and devastating tsunamis seen around the Pacific Rim, geologists say.