WHALES COMMUNICATED TO ESCAPE WHALERS : THE BIOLOGY OF MAKING THE SOUNDS and CODAS

Excerpt:
Soon after whaling ships began operating in the North Pacific, an interesting trend emerged. Within just a few years, whalers saw a 58% drop in their successful strikes. Sperm whales had suddenly become harder to kill— they had begun fleeing the boats instead of forming their usual defensive circles. Were whales communicating new strategies to each other?

FIRST TIME COLOSSAL SQUID SEEN BUT IT'S A TEENAGER!

DAILY MAIL SCIENCE COLOSSAL SQUID IN SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN 

EXCERPT: 

The stunning 4K video film, captured in the deep sea by California's Schmidt Ocean Institute, shows the rare creature's transparent body and eight pink tentacles.

Colossal squid can grow up to 23 feet (7 metres) and weigh as much as 500kg, making them the heaviest invertebrate on the planet.

But this specimen, which looks like a delicate glass sculpture, is just a 'teenager' – measuring 11 inches (30cm).

Dying colossal squid adults have previously been filmed by fishermen, but the species has never been seen alive at depth before.

Expedition chief scientist, Dr Michelle Taylor at the University of Essex, called the footage 'stunning' and 'beautiful'.

Siren here!  Check out the video on the website I linked to....  I wonder if the scientists will be able to find this particular creature again when it is more grown!

MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM RESEARCH INSTITUTE : INTO THE DEEP : SEA CREATURES IN THE MONTEREY BAY

 There are remote cameras in the bay operated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium....

The many creatures are named and listed are the depths they are found. Lots of squid and jelly.

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE : GLASS SQUID

WOODS HOLE CREATURE FEATURES GLASS SQUID 

Excerpt from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Creature Feature page.

Glass squid - specifically, Chranchia scabra - get a rough reputation because of the small tubercles dotting their bodies (also called their 'mantle"). If they sense danger, this squid can transform into a lumpy ball by stuffing its bulbous head and tentacles into this mantle cavity.  They're also able to 'go dark' by instantly changing the color of their skin to black.  Scientists have noticed that glass squid release ink into their mantle when threatened, which may help them change color, or could act as a chemical weapon against hungry whales and seabirds.

Shape-shifting and camouflage aren't the only cool tricks up the glass squid's tentacles.  Light-emitting organs, or photophores, around their eyes help them see in the dark and scare away predators.  Females also sport photophores on the tips of their arms, which may be useful for attracting mates.

MUDLARK by LARA MAIKLEM - SIREN's LINK TO SEA BOOK REVIEW - SEA FOSSILS

What a fascinating book.  For those of you who like to go to the water's edge and see what you can find - besides sea shells and sea weeds washed ashore - this book may inspire you to think ahead about where you can go and why.  Lara Maiklem's hobby as a mudlark, a person who finds things washed up by river tides, has made her an expert about the way the Thames River, the river that goes through the city of London to the ocean, flows.  Most surprising to me was that this is a river that has tides.  With the ebb and flow of the tides, various objects have been deposited, others have no doubt been washed out to sea for hundreds of years. So she and other mudlarkers make it a point of frequently visiting various areas where the river flows to see what has been brought up, what is embedded, and her finds include ancient coins, painted tiles, and a variety of objects like needles, pins, thimbles, and beads, religious objects and weapons.  As most of these objects were made of natural materials - not plastic - they don't threaten the living creatures of those waters so much though of course there is a history of sea creatures becoming extinct over time. It's those creatures though that I want to excerpt about. 

Page 53  Excerpt:  Encased in clay and lying among the gravel on the foreshore are the fossilized remains of the creatures that inhabited those prehistoric seas.  The pencil-like internal shells of belemnites, ancient extinct squid, that swam in shoals over 66 million years ago; bivalves the size and shape of cockles, frozen in stone; and 'devil's toenails', an extinct form of marine oyster that lived in the sediment of the seabed.  At Warden's Point on the Estuary, fossilized crabs, lobsters, shells, twigs, and shark teeth fall from the low cliffs of London clay onto the beach where they can be collected by the handful, and occasionally smoothed pieces of yellow amber will wash ashore where the Estuary and the North Sea mingle. Years ago, before people knew what fossils were, they were shrouded in folklore and assigned all kinds of quasi-religious and mystical associations. One of the most commonly found fossils in the south of England, and along the Thames' foreshore, are echinoids.  The colloquial name for echinoid is 'sea urchin', which comes from the old country name for hedgehog....

TWELVE FOOT LONG GIANT SQUID CAPTURED ON FILM in GULF OF MEXICO

NEWSWEEK - RARE VIDEO OF 12 FOOT LONG GIANT SQUID by Aristos Georgiou 

The Medusa Camera System which uses red light in dark waters that won't scare the creatures was used.

EXCERPT: "You feel very alive, " Nathan Robinson, one of the scientists aboard the expedition said in a statement, describing the moment that he saw the footage.  "There's something instinctual about these animals that captures the imagination of everyone - the wonder that there are these huge animals out there on our planet that we know so little about, and that we've only caught on camera a couple of times."

WATCH A RARE VIDEO of a RARE TRANSPARENT PIGLET SQUID!

MOTHER NATURE NETWORK : TRANSPARENT PIGLET SQUID by Ben Bolton

EXCERPT: The piglet squid is able to regulate boyancey with an ammonia-filled internal chamber, and it often floats with its tentacles above its head as you can see in the video (at the website above.)  The video was recorded at about 4,544 feet below the ocean near Palmyra Atoll...

CUTEST BANDED PIGLET SQUID! SWIMS UPSIDE DOWN!

I've never seen anything like this before!

OUR BREATHING PLANET : BANDED PIGLET SQUID

SEA FLOWER? FISH? SQUID?

KID ORAGAMI FROM DOVER : SQUID