Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
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Category: Carnivals & Link Love
Posted on: April 24, 2008 8:18 PM, by Peter Etnoyer
Chris Mah's Echinoblog is off and running with a wealth of weirdness. Today he features the crinoidea, or crinoids, with some terrific images of open and close-fisted crinoid forms I've never seen before, and frankly, scare the daylights out of me (see the image from Charles Messing at Chris' website).
It's scary enough being in a research submarine, as if you need to worry about scaled urchins and the like. I never realized echinoderms were so... creepy. Now I'm worried.
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Comments
Echinoblog made my day!
And gave me all sorts of crochet-ideas....
Bwahahahaha!
Posted by: Barn Owl | April 25, 2008 6:28 AM
right now I am looking through the logs and video from a 2005 voyage to find the one HD shot they really want of 20-30 or so crinoids covering a sponge at around 2500m. Truely a scene of nightmares, especially when they all take to the water and "fly" towards the camera in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds.
Posted by: Eric | April 26, 2008 2:12 PM
The Gulf of Alaska Seamount expedition video at YouTube opens with a beautiful shot of a swimming crinoid. Their means of midwater locomotion is extraordinary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdrdAt3T8UM
Posted by: Peter | April 26, 2008 2:21 PM