Sometimes, you just don't want to know about the lifestyles of the tentacled.
The vampire squid lurks in the eternal midnight of the deep sea and a cloak-like web stretches between its eight arms. When threatened, it turns inside out, exposing rows of finger-like projections, called cirri. Vampire squid eat mostly “marine snow”—a mixture of dead bodies, poop, and snot. The soft cirri help the animal transfer food to its mouth, seen here in the center of the frame.
Uh, yum?
More like this
Credit to NOC and Deepscape.org: Coarse rocky ground with cirrate octopus (Cephalopod) above the seabed taken at 1126m in the Faroe-Shetland Channel. Others great images can be viewed by searching around their image bank.
The following polychaete worm, probably a Nereid, was found in our deep sea mussel tanks. Often times we will collect a bunch of mussels in a scoop which results in gathering some other rare deep sea creatures and their larvae.
Spring is in the air!
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