A lesson in deep sea biology

In our lab today, we got to have a look at some rare, interesting and extremely ugly specimens from the deep sea.

My favourites included Histioteuthis, a squid that lives in a depth range between 200-1000m. For this rather large range it has 2 different sized eyes- the small one takes in light from the shallower areas and the large one allows more light in in deeper areas, which I found out a couple of years ago is also why pirates used to wear eye patches (so they can see above and below deck!).

There are a couple of photos of the actual specimen we looked at below, but the photo above allows a much better comparison of the eyes, so you can see there is a massive difference in their size.

Another was a fish with bioluminescent organs (photophores) under its eyes that act as headlights. I would love the opportunity to study bioluminescence in the future, it's an extremely interesting subject. Many of these organisms features in the photographs I have posted live in the deep Pacific, namely the Mariana trench-the deepest place on Earth. Only two people have visited this depth before, one of them being director James Cameron- fewer people have been in the deepest part of the ocean than on the surface of the moon. Let that sink in a little, and you will understand why I love this part of marine biology.

Bioluminescence is used for a range of things, mainly though for attracting pray, warning predators to keep away, and blending in with their surroundings. An example of the latter is a fish that lives in waters just above its predators (the twilight zone). It has photophores on its belly that emit light of the same colour and brightness as the water above it, basically erasing its own silhouette against what little light reaches down.

Some prawns have bioluminescent vomit that they throw up all over their predators, to confuse and choke them, allowing them to escape.

I could go on for hours, honestly, and I will probably write another post on this when I work out how to add photos from my phone. I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed learning about it and writing it!

This specimen is older than me!

A lot of deep sea fish have long, thin teeth, which make it easier for them to catch and hold onto prey, because in the dark often if the prey escapes, it's gone for good.

This is one of several species of deep sea fish that grow light-producing organs (photophores) under their eyes to act as headlights. In most cases, they emit blue light as it travels furthest in the dark, but some predators emit red light that only they can see- red light is absorbed first and so many organisms cannot see it.

This specimen was one I encountered a couple of weeks ago when I was helping out the deep sea department with their cataloguing. It is the squid with one eye bigger than the other. It was so big I had to take two photos to show the difference in size.

The pictures below give you an idea of what the photophores look like when the organisms are alive:

The red prawn on the right is adapted to deep sea conditions in two ways:

1. Its body is red in colour. This is because its predators cannot see red, which makes it invisible to them.

2. It vomits bioluminescent goo in the face of its predator, which blinds, confuses and sometimes chokes it, meaning it can escape.

There are some organisms that have photophores for unknown reasons, and I think this may be a subject area I would like to continue my studies in.

Exams finally over!

So, it's been a while, and I have been terribly busy with exams, but they've all finished now and I'm free.
The timetable for this semester isn't certain yet, but I've had my first marine ecology lecture and it looks as though it will be a fantastic unit. We will be covering one biome every lecture, ranging from the shallow, rocky shores to the deep sea (possibly my favourite biome).
Today, we also had a physical oceanography lecture by Dr Siman Boxall, who has featured on Channel 4 documentaries about the 2004 and Japan tsunamis and who I feel very lucky to have as a lecturer. He showed us a few slides from a project he participated in, Cape Farewell, where he took several artists such as musician KT Tunstall and comedian Marcus Brigstocke to the Arctic. His aim was, through the inspiration the artists got from their time in the Arctic, to inform people of the reality of the shrinking sea ice. I found it both humbling and fascinating, and some of the things the artists came up with, including projecting words onto icebergs and jumping into the freezing (-1°C) sea in a survival suit and just "drifting", were really creative.
If you would like to have a look at the fantastic project, here's a link with more information:
http://www.capefarewell.com/

I have a sea survival course coming up around Easter, and I am hoping to bring my camera with me to document some of it. There will be more boatwork, too, which I am looking forward to, and there will also be more practicals soon, although I'm not entirely sure what they will involve.

Update on the Hobbit tshirt competition: I have completed it and am now the proud owner of the tshirt, which I will post a picture of a bit later.

Other than that, there's not really an awful lot of interesting things I can report as I have basically been living in the library for the past three weeks. Unpleasant but worth it, because now the exams are over. I promise to have a more interesting entry next time!

Boat work 11/12/2013

After a night interrupted by constant shouting by the inconsiderate residents of the flat above us, this morning's 6:30am start was difficult to say the least- the persuasion needed to get myself out of bed was something I have not had to do since the first year of sixth form. But it was worth it, because the views of the sea both from land and from the boat were spectacular due to the heavy mist. Setting off from the docks at 9:00am precisely (we ended up leaving two students behind!) reminded me of the first scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, when the ship is making its way through fog.

We trawled using two different methods. The first was using just a net, the second using a metal cage frame, and both of these brought up lots of seaweed, crabs, and many Devil's toenails. There was also another method that I missed the chance to take a photo of, and this one brought up smelly, anoxic, black sediment that did not really have much life in at all.

I decided I had to take a photo of the explosives sign on the door of the "vessels store" where we were told we could shelter somewhat from the cold while we waited to board the Callista, to show you the perfectly safe environment here at the NOC...

The Callista had to wait a couple of minutes to leave after the Discovery set off.

While we were waiting aboard the Callista, we watched one of the people waiting on the side playing around with this remote controlled intriguing looking thing. I don't know what it was doing, but it had a camera on it and was hovering perfectly above us, and it looks pretty cool.

The Discovery leaves the dock.

Perhaps Amazon Air got lost on its maiden voyage? 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25180906

The low fog obstructed the view of the cranes and gave me this rather good photo opportunity.

The Discovery disappears into the fog

This is the edge of the fog, where it began to lift

The last, quite eerie shot of the Discovery before it disappeared completely

The trawling net is deployed

The first catch of the day!

This small crab is a female with a parasitic sponge in the place where she would usually keep her eggs. You can see it bulging out of the abdomen by the legs. This shore crab moves to deeper water when it gets too cold or nutrient-poor in the shallower waters.

My lecturer demonstrates the camouflage techniques of the spider crab pictured below. They hid their very slim, surprisingly delicate bodies in a red weed that looks very similar to them.

You can see blobs on the leg near the top of the photo, and these are sponges (these ones are not parasitic though)

Lovely little spider crab

This is a group of bivalve molluscs related to the Devil's toenail genus Gryphaea. My lecturer told our group that on this "clump of stuff" there were roughly 15 species of organism. These included the red weed growing on the sea squirt to the right, the sea squirt itself, the other sea squirt to its left, the bivalves, the orange lumps that are sponges, and the while squiggles (not sure if they are visible in the picture) that are a type of worm.

A small oyster shell

This small crab has many more visible sponge growths on its legs.

One of the smallest crabs I have ever seen- the rough patch is the very tip of the finger of the glove! It's amazing how so many small and delicate organisms can survive living in an area that seems quite hostile or dangerous.

Another tiny crab. On both of these pictures I had to use the "super macro" setting on the camera.

The "fins" on the back legs of this swimmer crab are, unsurprisingly, used for swimming, although it's difficult for an animal such as a crab to swim properly even with an adaptation like this- they are just not built for it.

A type of polychaete worm

The orange blobs on this group of organisms clustered together are sponges

A tiny whelk

Sifting through this crate of anoxic, muddy sediment was smelly work and extremely cold. In fact it was so cold that our fingers hurt.

My second favourite specimen of the day was this peacock worm. This shot was taken underwater from inside the bucket. Quite a beautiful thing, don't you think?

My favourite specimen of the day, even though I got a very brief look at it, was a tiny lobster about the length of my thumb. I'm not sure where it got put, but I didn't manage to take a photo which is a shame. I had an enjoyable couple of hours on the boat- not the longest, but by far the coldest boat experience, and now I think I am going to go back to bed for a couple of hours to recover from the hideously early start (not to mention the waking up at three in the morning because the flat upstairs were having an argument!). 

I hope you enjoy the pictures, I am extremely excited about coming home to London for Christmas in three days time, I have missed my double bed quite a lot. I'm also revising for my upcoming January exams, which I am quite nervous about. But I'll worry about that after my snooze...

Cornettos and Hobbits

Last night the Union hosted a film marathon that I went to see with a few of my friends, the Cornetto trilogy. Aside from the films themselves, it certainly felt like a marathon because the cinema seats are the most uncomfortable seats I have ever had to sit in-and I sat in my seat for six hours! Ok, we did have between-film breaks for a stretch and food. But still.

The Cornetto trilogy is three films starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost: Shaun of the dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End. I had only seen the first two, and so was expecting the same old silly (but good) humour. The World's End surprised me, though. It was more serious than the other two, and had a dramatic back story that wouldn't usually go together with a group of old friends reuniting to have a second go at a popular bar crawl. Nevertheless, it worked well. I got a free tshirt, too.

Speaking of tshirts, I have started the fellowship challenge at the Hobbit pub (the best pub in the world). The challenge is to get all twelve Lord of the Rings themed drinks ticked off on the sheet they give you buy buying them. Once complete, you win a tshirt with the pub's logo, and the right to buy the thirteenth drink, the Nazgûl. So far I have four drinks stamped:
Gandalf
Elrond
Faramir
Fili

By far the worst rated drink is the Bilbo, an orange juice based cocktail with amaretto in it. It's disgusting, so the real challenge is drinking a whole pint of it. I had the unfortunate experience of tasting my flatmate's one, and it tastes like greasy orange juice. It was not great. On the plus side, though, the staff at the Hobbit are very friendly, and actively encourage the building of pyramids with the used plastic cups. Which is great fun.

Right, that's it for now, I have a fair amount of work to do. I'm looking forward to the Christmas holidays when I can see my family again (and sleep in a double bed!), I do miss everyone! But I'm having a really good time, so I can't really complain, can I?

Echinoderms and Asteroidea

Today we looked at Echinoderms, which include star fish (fun fact, the class name for starfish is Asteroidea. They're asteroids!) and sea urchins. The practical really shows the diversity of marine life, and you'll see in the photos I've posted. There are quite a few photos as I took some of specimens from the last practical, too. This has been one of my favourite practicals because I love the beauty of starfish and their radial symmetry. They are nice to draw, too.

I saw this on the shelf next to me when I was putting on my lab coat, and it's a squid so I must have missed it last lab when we covered molluscs. It's a shame because cephalopods are my favourite class so far!

This curious object is called the Aristotle's Lantern. It has absolutely nothing to do with light, it is in fact the "mouth parts" of a sea urchin- if you have the shell of one, it sits at the bottom where the large hole is. It is an extremely complicated structure and has five sharp teeth at the bottom, which are what enable it to be absolutely devastating to kelp forests!

This urchin has adapted to grow some of its spines into plates. These serve to absorb shock from large waves, so this species is found in places where there are frequent storm surges, and other organisms cannot survive.

I have always loved the simplicity of "sand dollars". I have a tiny fossilised one at home- they are a very old species!

This urchin has sulphur-using (I forgot the word, it's been a long day!) bacteria in its stomach that allow it to bury itself and survive deeper in the sediment than other organisms.

Also from the last practical is perhaps one of my favourite marine animals of all time- the nautilus! Its shell is adapted for buoyancy, and the way in which each segment inside the shell is curved (I can't remember if they are concave or convex) means that it is one of the strongest shells in marine biology. It can survive at depths of up to around 700m!

I'm not sure what this is, but it looks like a sand dollar trying to be a starfish. Or a paint splat.

This thing is a basket star, my favourite specimen of the practical. It has many very thin, very tangly arms that are used to snare its prey and bring it towards its stomach, located in the flat central part in the left of the photo. The star then literally vomits its stomach out to digest the prey externally.

Not a single person- including myself- attempted to draw any of the basket stars, for good reason. Although I feel like I have been challenged, so I might give it a go later.

This is a crinoid (also known as a feather star), and I think they look rather beautiful. They resemble a stone flower when preserved like the one in the photo, but live ones look more colourful. They are in a different class to starfish, but the same phylum (Echinodermata). 

This (I think) is a large cushion star. Cushion stars have an enlarged central disc, with arms shortened so they are merely corners of a pentagon. I've always thought they look quite comfortable, but they are very knobbly and hard.

This is a close-up of the cushion star, revealing the rough, patterned surface.

This is what the Aristotle's Lantern looks like inside the sea urchin. It really is a peculiar structure, and it does somewhat resemble a lantern.

The underside of the sea star in the picture above.

Bits of brittle sea stars. They usually have very long arms which tend to snap off when in their dry form, which is why they have their nickname. In some very acidic oceans (caused by increased carbonic acid formed when CO2 is dissolved in seawater) if the sea stars try to move, their arms will snap off while they are still alive!

I found the curled arms of the basket star so beautifully complicated I couldn't really stop taking photos. I took 72 in the whole practical!

In the weeks between now and when the Christmas holidays start I will have some boat work, which I am looking forward to. The lecturer briefly told us we would get to see some of the organisms we saw in these practicals alive, so the camera will definitely be joining me! I will find out when this is happening, and may write another blog post before then if it is in a while.

That's enough from me for today, I'm off to the Hobbit for a Frodo.