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The deeper you go the creepier it seems

Creepiest ocean waters

By Javel samuelsPublished 10 months ago 10 min read
2
The deeper you go the creepier it seems
Photo by Alex Rose on Unsplash

Not each of the haziest most abnormal corners of the universe are in some far off Cosmic system a great many light years away as a matter of fact the most secretive of these dull puts is here on Earth a spot with no daylight smashing strain and close to frigid temperatures isn't the ruined No man's land that one could anticipate that it should be it is rather populated with an immense assortment of life that comes to fruition in manners that our earthly Personalities can scarcely grasp a few animals of the profound have colossal piercing eyes others have no eyes by any means others actually have eyes inside their straightforward domed heads others shine for safeguard or sparkle for predation and at these profundities where photosynthesis can't happen the order of things turns into a little capricious a few animals regularly delegated channel feeders have even developed to become impossible startling carnivores others become such powerful hunters that their mouths are greater than the remainder of their whole body or have teeth that pierce the obscurity toward each path from the Ethereal to the creepy the dim ocean holds a universe of transformations that jolts the creative mind and the further you go the creepier it appears to get what is it precisely about the most unimaginable ocean that makes probably the most stunning animals at any point found and is there an explanation we can't resist the urge to view them as frigidly unpleasant the highest layer of the remote ocean is the mesopelagic Also known as A Twilight Zone and it stretches out from 200 meters to 1,000 meters a smidgen of light actually enters at these profundities however not much the absolute first tone to vanish is red since it has the longest frequency and minimal energy of the noticeable range and a ton of animals that invest time in a Twilight Zone utilize this for their potential benefit developing to be shades of red that render them basically undetectable at these profundities enter the vampire squid getting a brief look at it in the lights of a sub you could comprehend the reason why it got such a horrible name on top of its red skin it has tremendous eyes that appear to gleam and spine-like bulges from its limbs all give it an undeniably more fearsome look than the cephalopods of shallower waters yet similarly as its red tone appears to be Ghostly to us yet has an essential developmental reason so too do its other Evil looking elements in spite of its creepy name vampire squid are not really homicidal Trackers dissimilar to practically any remaining cephalopods this animal is a detrivore it gets practically its calories from Marine snow Marine snow is all particulate matter that streams down from higher up in the sea and is made of rotting Shellfish zooplankton larvasion houses diatoms and feces the vampire squid has four arm matches with finger-like ringlets called Siri in addition to two long retractable fibers it sits essentially unmoving around profundities of 600 to 900 meters gradually gathering Marine snow on its mucous-loaded fibers and slurping it down researchers were shocked to find that Marine snow has a high healthy benefit yet the vampire squid actually doesn't have a ton of energy to exhaust they get by on account of having a stifled digestion a whole lot lower than some other cephalopod of an equivalent size yet as you plummet further the cephalopods become significantly seriously unnerving the sort magnapina or the enormous balance squid are believed to be the most profound happening squid variety with sightings as profound as 6,212 meters this spreads the word about the huge blade squid the main squid to possess the hadle Zone the most profound locale of the sea their arms and limbs can really depend on eight meters in length and are typically held at vexing right points the squid providing itself with the presence of having elbows and its clear sparkling mantle spreads the word about the animals appear to be totally powerful little is about the taking care of conduct of these squids researchers have hypothesized that they could utilize their long arms by hauling them along the ocean bottom and snatching anything that palatable organic entities that they can on the other hand the arms could latently get food, for example, zooplankton or pieces of marine snow however in a climate with next to no vegetation to frame the foundation of the well established pecking order being a detrivore is a long way from the main technique truth be told various creatures that are herbivores or channel feeders in shallower parts of the sea become carnivores in the remote ocean that is the situation with the ruthless tunicate it has a place with the acidian family who are otherwise called ocean spurts a class of bright fixed channel feeders that by and large live in shallow water but the predatory tunicate lives much deeper anywhere from 600 to 1100 meters and perhaps even deeper these tunicates are perhaps less terrifying than the big fin squid but just as strange they look almost like an eyeless sock puppet with its mouth open but this odd design has an important purpose to help them catch prey as small invertebrates and Crustaceans swim by they sometimes drift into the predatory tunicate's open mouth that mouth quickly snaps shut and the prey is trapped facing a slow death by digestion this is also the case with a whole family of organisms known as carnivorous sponges they generally start appearing at 200 meters become fairly common at four to five hundred meters and remain dominant all the way down to the hadle Zone below 6 000 meters shallow water sponge species are filter feeders like sea squirts living on bacteria and phytoplankton they're even harvested as shower loofahs their porous bodies being a good mechanism to hold and form soap bubbles but you most definitely do not want to wash yourself with a carnivorous sponge and that's because they're covered in tiny Spears and hooks used to passively trap small swimming creatures the sponges don't have to do much work whether it's the harp sponge with its long rows of spines or the ping pong tree sponge with its bulbous spheres these stationary organisms are highly effective Predators they just wait for the ocean currents to sweep creatures into their spines and then they feast despite this abundance of passive carnivores there are plenty of hunters in the deep sea as well one such startling specimen is the gulper eel found at depths over 1800 meters in the midnight zone its mouth is larger than the rest of its entire body and is Loosely hinged so that it can swallow animals much larger than itself its proportions may be off-putting but in an environment with limited food being able to gorge on a massive meal when you have the chance is crucial its massive mouth can also be used to make itself look intimidating by ballooning up to a hilarious degree but most infamous among the deep sea Hunters might be the anglerfish most of which live below 300 meters but some can be found down to the abyssopelagic Zone all the way at 6 000 meters there are hundreds of species that fall under the catch-all term of anglerfish which comes from the way they generally hunt with a lure attached to their heads to attract prey this is comprised of an Elysium the modified dorsal spine that acts as a fishing rod and an eska the bulbous bioluminescent fishing lure which gets its glow from symbiotic bacteria and by using these lures anglerfish attract a variety of prey species to their gaping mouths and they've been known to consume absurd quantities of food all at once researchers once captured a black sea devil that weighed 8.8 grams but its stomach held 12.3 grams worth of eels in other words its stomach alone managed to hold one and a half times its body weight in food to be able to consume whatever they come across anglerfish have highly flexible jaws and generally have teeth that point inward meaning that whenever they trap their prey there's little chance of the creature escaping and just like the gulper eel their strategy of gorging themselves whenever they can get a meal is a huge advantage in an environment where food is scarce while some creatures use bioluminescence for predation others use it to disguise themselves a strategy called counter illumination the lights on their bellies helps obscure their outline against the very faint patches of light coming from above but there are some predators who have found ways to see their prey camouflaging in this way and perhaps the most incredible of these is macro Penna microstoma or the Pacific barilai fish arguably the craziest looking fish in the entire ocean these fish have enormous tubular eyes that are directed upward allowing them to see prey swimming overhead and these eyes are encased inside their head closed in by a transparent Shield their vision is so good that they can not only pick out the Silhouettes of their prey even if it's using bioluminescence but also gauge the depth they're swimming at and therefore their distance from them but initially scientists were confused about how it could effectively hunt when its tiny mouth points in a different direction than its eyes they wouldn't be able to keep their eyes on the prey while moving their mouth to eat it but the scientists were shocked to discover that the eyes can roll forward and see through the front of their heads as well as the top for a maximum Arc of 75 degrees for comparison humans can only move our eyes about 45 degrees at most for us to do what Barrel I fish do we would essentially be able to look directly up at our brains this strange adaptation allows Barrel life fish to keep their prey in view at all times even as it snaps its body vertically to snatch the food swimming above it but barrel-eye fish live in the Twilight Zone where there's still a tiny bit of light available for them to make use of what about fish that are even deeper down in the bathy pelagic or even abyssopelagic all the way down to 6000 meters with no sunlight penetrating these depths and with little need to detect bioluminescence some deep sea creatures forego Vision altogether like the tripod fish instead of it relying on sight they balance on the sea floor like little tripods waiting for other creatures to swim by their elongated pelvic fins stretch down to the ground holding the motionless and upright while they use their pectoral fins like hands Reaching Forward these fins are filled with enlarged spinal nerves which helps them sense the water currents and whatever objects might float their way from small Crustaceans to fish in this way they're essentially able to sit tight and wait for food to come to them even though they can't see it and while these fish are certainly deep they are by no means the deepest ones recently scientists exploring a marine trench near Japan were stunned to find a fish living 8336 meters below the surface the deepest fish anyone has ever found and is likely to ever find what they found is a type of hadal snailfish a translucent scaleless tadpole-shaped creature little is known about this ghostly ethereal fish that thrives in a place named after Hades itself is this deepest of fish the creepiest maybe not though it's certainly not winning any beauty contests but from the beginning of the ocean depths just as sunlight disappears down to the crushing depths of the deepest trenches there's no denying that the creatures who live here seem like characters out of the darkest corners of our imagination and yet every freaky adaptation is something crafted by millions of years of evolution to live in such an unusual environment it's not hard to see why deep sea creatures invoke creepy feelings in us the creatures are nothing like the ones we see in our daily lives and without the Advent of Robotics we would never be able to see them in their natural habitat their habitat is so far removed from us that we liken it to the underworld and for whatever reason Humanity subscribes to the archetype that the sky holds possibilities euphoric Cloud nines and Heaven itself whereas The Depths hold fears secrets and eternal death perhaps this is no surprise as intelligent air-breathing mammals that what is bright and known is safe to us and the unfathomable sea mysterious dark and otherworldly is not but our ancestral Consciousness perhaps never grasped that the world is all connected that the Bountiful Rivers ensures that we rely on are directly linked to the deepest parts of the sea that what's seems alien is in fact a vital part of our world and deserves our consideration care and protection like any other part of our planet the evolution of ocean creatures is undeniably fascinating for all the freaky and foreign adaptations that excite our imaginations but some of the most astonishing adaptations on Earth happen right here on land and in our own species human eyesight is one of the most complex biological processes we know of but what's even more amazing is what individuals who have lost their sight are still able to see human sonar allows people without sight to see with sound and other individuals who lost their sight due to damage to their visual cortex can still complete obstacle courses with no knowledge that they even did so these phenomena are the subject of the next real science

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Javel samuels

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