The bloodybelly comb jelly (Lampocteis cruentiventer) really is called that by actual scientists. These 6-inch, KONG-shaped globs are deep red to hide themselves in the twilight world, where red coloring acts like camouflage against the darkness. It’s a necessary adaptation, because the bloodybelly comb jelly’s favorite foods are bioluminescent. Without its red disguise, the comb jelly’s predators would be able to spot its meals glowing through its semi-transparent stomach. Because they live at depths between 900 and 7000 feet and don’t often come closer to the surface, gulper eels are rarely encountered in the wild, but they occasionally get swept up in commercial fishing nets.

What is the Deep Sea?

Diagram on the right shows how deep the different colors of light penetrate into the ocean. You can see that red light doesn’t reach down very far, this is why many deep-sea animals are red, so they are camouflaged. Down here, the only flashes of light come from animals’ bioluminescent bodies. Deep sea anglerfish, whose huge mouths hold long, sharp teeth, wear a lure attached to their heads like a wand to draw in prey. For red comb jellies, darkness provides camouflage — without sun, their red color turns jet black.

Giant Tubeworms (Riftia pachyptila)

While coral reefs in shallow water are well studied and loved by people, very little is known about their deep sea relatives. We do know that many commercially important species like shrimps, crabs, groupers, rockfish, and snappers rely on deep sea coral reefs for shelter, but this is only based upon a limited number of studies and dives. Scientists, including Quattrini, continue to discover additional species that call deep sea coral reefs home, showing that there is still much to learn about the deep sea.

• The goblin shark doesn’t just open its jaws — it launches them forward in a lightning-fast strike, faster than the blink of an eye.
• To date, 167 states and the European Union have ratified the international law (the United States is one of the few that has not).
• Chimaeras even have a venomous dorsal spine for protection from predation.
• Taken together, these assets have produced a valuable dataset that documents the long-term trends and changes in this Arctic ecosystem.
• Organisms that hope to survive in these habitats have to face a range of challenges – from a lack of food, to cold and perpetual darkness, to extreme pressures (e.g. 200 times surface pressure at a depth of 2,000 metres).
• These comb jellies are bioluminescent, too, and may use these signals for communication or as a defense mechanism.
• But as the Rocky Mountains began to rise and subsequently erode, the extra weight of the sediment flushed into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River was enough to break the seal.

Environmental impacts

Animal life at a hydrothermal vent relies on the energy produced by symbiotic bacteria. The bacteria live either inside the bodies or on the surface of their hosts. But unlike most life on earth that uses light from the sun as a source of energy, these bacteria produce energy through a chemical reaction that uses minerals from the vents. These vents are also so deep that they never see a glimmer of light from the sun. Despite these obstacles, clams, mussels, shrimp, and gigantic worms thrive in these habitats.
This means they can make their bodies heavier if they want to go down, or lighter if they want to swim up. In the deep-sea species Coryphaenoides, the Grenadier fish, there is both a large swim bladder, and a large oily liver. Starting at roughly 200 meters and stretching to 10,000 meters deep, the deep sea is dark, cold, under intense pressure and food-scarce. The deep sea is home to habitats and species found nowhere else on Earth, and provides essential environmental services.

• Like the open ocean, the seafloor is similarly divided into distinct zones.
• Now we know that the deep sea (generally meaning 200 to 10,000 meters, or 650 to 32,800 feet deep) is the largest habitable place on the planet.
• Their blood contains hemoglobin that binds tightly to both oxygen and hydrogen sulfide.
• To maximize its economic potential, deep-sea mining requires effective governance.
• Here, under crushing pressure, in freezing darkness, life has not only survived but flourished in astonishing, often bewildering forms.

At this depth, we’ve reached the average depth of the deep-sea floor, a place that may start to get a little muddy. The further we dive down from the surface, the less new food is available, making the fight to survive that much more challenging. Despite these harsh conditions, there is life—an astounding variety of creatures that will boggle your mind. You can’t dive to the deep ocean on your own, of course, but scientists have a variety of sophisticated technologies to explore this vast frontier.

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Supporters of deep-sea mining argue it could, in theory, take the pressure off land-based mining. But the first priority should be reducing demand for virgin materials and increasing metal recycling, Oceana’s scientists say — not seeking pristine new areas to exploit. “We see no evidence that deep-sea mining would replace land-based mining  — it seems more likely that it would only add to the overall pollution created by mining activities,” Bedolfe says. The same minerals found in the deep-sea are used for electric car batteries, wind turbine generators, and solar panels.

The Deep Sea

The fangs actually slide into specially formed pockets in the roof of the mouth when the jaw is closed. Dumbo octopuses live on or near the seabed and are most commonly seen resting or crawling on the seabed, although they can also swim. Three species were described using specimens found at the Porcupine Abyssal Plain and from within the Discovery Collections. We have a number of different species of angler fish which have all been collected in Deep Sea the North Atlantic at depth between 500 and 4,000m. Angler fish are extremely varied, in both size, habit and morphology – a few can grow to around a metre in length but most are much smaller, less than 20cm long.

The critters of the deep sea may thrive on calamari

They are quite puzzling creatures, and it’s not the first time we’ve taken a look at the goblin shark. Their most famous feature is the glowing lure that dangles from their heads. In a realm with no sunlight, that bioluminescence is irresistible to unsuspecting prey.
Their closest living relatives are sharks, but they branched off from the evolutionary line about 400 million years ago and are among the most primitive fish. Like sharks, the chimaera skeleton is made from cartilage, and they lay eggs in leathery cases and use electroreception to find prey. However, they differ from sharks in having a hidden gills covered by an operculum or gill cover, and non-replaceable rodent-like tooth plates. Chimaeras even have a venomous dorsal spine for protection from predation. Our specimen was collected at depths between 600–1,000m from the Eastern North Atlantic, in an area known as King’s Trough Flank.
Over millions of years, metals like iron, manganese, cobalt, and nickel slowly layered on, bringing some of these rocks to the size of a potato. But mining in the delicate ecosystem of the deep sea can do lasting harm. This was demonstrated in the experiment DISCOL (Disturbance and Recolonization), which the AWI and a host of other European research centres contributed to. In 1989, eleven square kilometres of the Pacific seafloor were churned up in an area roughly 650 kilometres southeast of the Galápagos Islands to simulate the mining of manganese nodules. In the years since, several expeditions have returned to the site to track its development.