Living on the eastern seaboard of the US for many years, Dr. M. has no doubt enjoyed the cool, crisp cocktail regionally known as the Gulf Stream. It’s sort of a southern equivalent of the mimosa, which of course is a respectable excuse to begin drinking on a Sunday morning, and not stop until just before dinner. Delicious, yes, but not nearly strong enough to slake the thirst of our leader. With a few tweaks of the original recipe, here is the Atlantic Gyre:
2 oz. Brandy
2 oz. Dry White Rum (10 Cane, Angostura)
1/4 oz. Blue Curacao
6 oz. Lemonade
Champagne
Mix all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, excluding the champagne; pour into a pint glass filled ¼ full of course crushed ice. Fill and top off with the champagne, garnish with a thin lime wedge & sprig of mint.

 Dr. M. is a complex man, having more facets than the Hope Diamond. Did you know he is not only obsessed by Southern home-made biscuits, but actually worked as a biscuit baker? To blend his love of biscuits with his love of the sea, here is a rich, smooth cocktail called the Sea Biscuit, after the creamy white, delicious echinoderm of the genus Clypeaster.

In a cocktail shaker add the following:
2 oz. Vanilla Schnapps
2 oz. Premium smooth white rum (Plantation Three-Star or Vizcaya Crystal White)
4 oz Horchata*
4 oz Full Cream Milk
Lightly shake the mix and pour into pint, adding ice to top off the drink, with a mild sprinkle of allspice on the top.
*you can substitute the pre-made product Rum Chata for the horchata & white rums

Other than biscuits, Dr. M’s has another obsession that wrestles him in his sleep and grips his thoughts in daytime. It is his White Whale, an archtypal beast of lore that he has been seeking but has yet to find. Being the largest of the large, the Colossal Squid doesn’t disappoint the imagination of what the deep-sea can conjure, nor the reality it’s based on. To Dr. M. and his beloved cephalopod, here is The Colossus:

2 oz. Pomegranite Liqueur
½ oz. Grenadine
2 oz. Dry White Rum (Brugal, Diplomatico, Matusalem)
1 oz. Gin
Juice of ½ lime
4 oz. club soda
Mix all ingredients together in a cocktail shaker with large ice cubes; shake and strain into a large glass. Add a dash of Cherry Bitters for the finish. Feel the cocktail’s tentacles work their way into your brain.

Some people think they are busy, but Dr. M. must drink more workahol that just about anybody I know. He coordinates with grant-writing teams, acts as a managing journal editor, trains his field crews, communicates with the press, writes scientific papers like a madman, and of course, simultaneously pens several different blogs, including Deep Sea News. As a twist to the old and well-haled drink of yore with the well-fitting name of The Wrangler, here is a version scaled-up to meet the needs of our boss. I call it The Commodore:

2 oz. Rye Whiskey
1 ½ oz. Dark Rum
5 oz. Orange Juice
5 oz. Ruby Grapefruit Juice
5 dashes of Angostura bitters
In a shaker put all of the ingredients except the ½ oz. of dark rum; pour into a pint glass and fill with cube ice to the top; add the remaining ½ oz. of Dark Rum as a float on top, garnish with a small sprig of fresh rosemary. Also fights scurvy.

Over the decade, Dr. M. has posted about his deep, somewhat disturbing, passion for Kraken Rum on the pages of Deep Sea News. Not only does this dusky rum shimmer with the darkness of the abyss, bear the piquant tang of the Spice Islands, and a inflicts a burn that would cause any buccaneer to reel, but their neo-Victorian steam punk meets Ernst Haeckel artwork is worthy of endless tattoos. Indeed, rum is often the fuel of creativity, and without the nourishing and enriching powers of rum drinks, Dr. M. wouldn’t be who he is today, so in honor of our leader, here is The Big Kahuna:

2 oz. Kraken Rum
2 oz. Macamadia Nut Liqueur
1 can sugar cane-based Cola soda
Fill a pint glass ½ full with cube ice, add the Kraken Rum and Macadamia Nut Liqueur, then fill the rest of the way with the cola, stirring lightly.

The post Five New Delicious (and Fittingly Strong) Cocktails in Honor of Dr. M. first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Sub-Neritic Gentrification

For November we will be doing some deep thinking about deep-sea mollusks in an attempt to understand the complex history and adaptations of these animals living in the depths of our oceans. Biodiversity of today’s marine snails can be traced to several different ecological and environmental phenomena, but in the Deep-Water Helmet Shell Galeodea keyteri, it is likely a case of adaptive radiation exploring new realms. The Helmet Shells (Cassidae) are a speciose group of large, shallow-water tropical and temperate marine snails that range among the intertidal coral rubble and sand flats to offshore muds, but as this evolutionarily successful group of gastropods continued to diversity into different niches, several species moved into deep-water to establish new ways of living. At these depths staying alive presents serious challenges with an extremely cold, low oxygen, nutrient-poor, and high-pressure environment, so some deep-water species trended to smaller, slow-growing physiologies like as a way to successfully conserve energy and resources. Since the dark depths lack sunlight needed for algae to grow, most species of deep-sea mollusks are either scavengers or predators, with little resources for vegetarians to survive. Like all Helmet Shells, Galeodea keyteri is a carnivore, specializing on starfish, brittle stars, and urchins. Catching their slow-moving prey with a muscular foot, glands in the proboscis secrete a fluid rich in acids that dissolve the echinoderm’s calcium-carbonate skeletons, while a radula drills into the weakened parts of the body to extract nutrients from their internal organs. A tough environment requires innovative strategies and hardy adaptations for a species to survive. Ain’t natural selection grand?

Molluscan Methuselah

While some species of deepwater mollusks are derived from shallow-water taxa that extended into and adapted within deep ocean ecosystems, other taxa of marine mollusks are taxonomic geezers with a much longer history. The Slit Snails (Pleuorotomariidae) are perhaps the oldest still-living lineage of marine snails, extending back in the fossil record more than 500 million years. Named because of its long slit at the aperture allowing for extension of their respiratory siphon, they were abundant in the shallow reefs throughout the world. Between the Late Cretaceous (ca. 90 million years ago) and the middle Eocene (ca. 40 million years ago) is when most modern lineages of shallow-water reef-living gastropods originated and diversified, and also the time when slit shells seem to disappear from that same fossil record. Among paleontologists and malacologists, the general hypothesis is that these modern taxa somehow out-competed the slit shells for food, or perhaps were more adapted to changing marine climates or fluctuating sea levels of the time, forcing the slit shells into progressively deeper and deeper water. This type of ecological displacement and bathymetric submergence has been seen in many other deep-sea groups, including corals, crinoids, brachiopods, and fishes. Today, slit shells are found in depths exceeding 3,000 meters, living the hi-life eating sponges in a cold, dark, lonely, nutrient-poor world.

Die-Hardest

As far as the origins of deep-sea gastropods go, we’ve visited two scenarios: new lineages of shallow-water snails radiating into deeper waters, and those formerly shallow-water taxa that have been out-competed in the shallows and forced into deeper, less productive habitats. But there’s a third group of deep-water snails that are so tough, so extreme that they can live in shallow and deep water. Here is the Checkered Hairsnail (Trichotropis cancellaria; Capulidae), the James Bond, the Bruce Willis, and the Rock all coiled up into one extreme snail that ranges from the intertidal zone to depths of nearly 2,000 ft. (600m). Is it true grit or it’s hard-boiled soul that make it impervious to the relentless cold, pressure, and darkness of the deep sea? Their broad range is more likely the result of two things: (1) a wide and variable physiology that can tolerate the extremes of shallow to deep; and (2) its broad diet that it can obtain at any depth. You see, the Checkered Hairsnail is a suspension-feeder, meaning it feeds on the decomposing bits of animal debris suspended in the water, which it traps by sticky mucous, and that kind of detritus is found in all habitats. However, it’s a sneaky critter. When the floating slurry of decomposition becomes scarce, they will parasitize tube worms by inserting their proboscis down the mouth of the worm and pumping out the contents of the worm’s stomach. Evolution: the weirder the better.

Slo-Mo Snail
Shallow-water gastropods live the good life. Warm water, a sunny sea rich in oxygen, and plenty of food provides them the metabolism to live fast, grow big, and die young, relatively speaking, of course. The flipside in the deep sea is a life of constant near-freezing cold, little available food, and water suffocatingly sparse in oxygen. This shell of the Catalina Turrid (Antiplanes catalinae, Pseudomelatomidae) who lives at depths of up to 4800 ft (1460 m), tells its story of life in this harsh realm. Growth lines, which indicate the increase and cessation of shell development, are seen as wide bands often far apart in curving spire of fast-growing shallow-water shells. In this species, the growth lines are close and compact, showing very slow growth and likely a long life. Their low metabolism provides little extra energy for their minimal growth and reproduction, so these snails probably take the developmental route of the tortoise over the hare. This shell tells another and more concerning story. Once only collected during deep-ocean trawls by research vessels, this species was prized by collectors as a rarity and an oddity. With commercial fisheries abandoning over-exploited fishing grounds along the shallower coasts, fishing has gone into the deep ocean to tap into those fragile resources. This specimen was taken as unintentional bycatch by a deep-water shrimp trawler, and though it wasn’t the target of the fisheries, the sparse populations of these slow-growing snails cannot sustain even the modest impact by commercial fisheries

Post-Docs Please Enquire

The curse of working with deep-sea gastropods is how few specimens are in museum collections, and what very little is known about them. That too is the siren’s call of opportunity in deep-sea malacological research. The Japanese Pagoda Shell (Columbarium pagoda, Turridae) has been known to science for close to 200 years, based on relatively few well-documented specimens in museums and private collections scattered throughout the world, yet virtually nothing is known about their ecology. Diet, trophic niche, age, growth rates, reproduction, population structure, predators, parasites, physiology, ecological associations, movements – none of that has been adequately documented. If all mysteries in the ocean were solved, there would be no jobs for future under-paid post-docs or over-worked assistant professors. Those with grant funding, a modicum of workaholism, and access to deep-sea technology could pioneer new directions into a richer ecological understanding of the deep ocean’s marine mollusks. That siren’s call can just as easily dash unfeasible projects on the rocks of financial destitution and lead to deep regret of one’s research program and entrée into a life of constant self-medication and personal validation. These mysteries await the bold, but favor the wise.

The post Malacology Monthly: Going Deep first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Discoveries in science are not often the result of the stereotypical and unrealistic step-by-step scientific method, but usually occur through other more mundane and unexpected routes.  Think of Flemming’s moldy lunchbox sandwiches as the pathway to developing penicillin, or Newton stone-drunk in an orchard contemplating gravity with a rain of apples falling on his noggin’. When marine biologists discover a new species, especially a new shark species, it isn’t the result of putting on a red-knit cap and a pair of Speedos on your research vessel and loudly declaring that you are going to discover a new shark. Throw the mini-sub overboard, gaze into the darkness through an oval window, and bam – a new species is discovered. Bottles of Clicquot pop back on deck, the scientific community hoists you on their shoulders and applauds your excellence in zoology. Maybe the jackals from Shark Week give you a call to recreate your daring feats for a documentary low on facts and ripe with pseudoscience, likely replacing you with younger C-list actors and warping what actually happened with their own overly-dramatic narrative. With our discovery of the newly-described Ninja Lanernshark, it wasn’t the reward of a planned grand adventure, but was the usual meander of social connections, cooperation among colleagues, the benefits of museum archives, hard work from unpaid graduate students, and plain old good luck.

Several years back, John McCosker of the California Academy of Sciences and Dave Ebert, also a Cal. Academy research associate like myself, and I were studying chimeras, distant deep-sea cousins of sharks. One day I got an email from D. Ross Robertson of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who in 2010 chartered a Spanish trawler and conducted a number of deep-sea collections off the Pacific coast of Central America, and among the barrels of specimens he collected were a few odd-looking chimeras he wanted us to identify.  Ross had the good sense to photograph many of these specimens while they were still fresh out of the nets, and he forwarded them to us. Along with the photos of these chimeras were hundreds of other photos of deep-sea fishes, including sharks, skates, and bony fishes that were either entirely unknown species, or new locality records for previously-known but poorly documented species.  To a deep-sea ichthyologist, this was the jackpot.  I soon headed to the ichthyology collections at the Smithsonian and spent several days pulling these specimens out of gallon jars of ethanol or dipping my arms nearly shoulder-deep into huge vats of the stuff where the large specimens were preserved. Taking photographs, measurements, and making on-the-spot identifications, I compiled a large number of specimens that the fine folks in the Smithsonian ichthyology department shipped back to the California Academy of Sciences where we could more closely study them.

Once the sharks arrived, Dave and I looked them over and we both thought they were a new species since
they were unlike anything yet known from the eastern central Pacific, but “discovering” a new species isn’t as easy as that.  To describe a new species you need to conclusively show the range of variation in your new species is outside the range of variation in previously-known species. It has to be significantly different than any relative species thus far known. To do this required the painstaking and time consuming process of morphometrics, the detailed series of measurements of the sharks anatomy, and meristics, the count of such things as vertebrae, tooth rows, number of dermal denticles, etc. Fortunately, Dave and I already had a process where we worked with young go-getters, mainly his graduate students at the Pacific Shark Research Center in the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, to learn the process of describing and publishing new species of sharks, rays, and chimeras. Victoria Vasquez was one of his students already with experience in shark ecology and conservation outreach, so he assigned her to heading the job of the not-so-sexy nitty-gritty of the detailed analysis of the formalin-preserved shark specimens with microscopes, rulers, and dial calipers, and she was a superstar at it.

It soon became clear that these small sharks did indeed represent a new species of lanternshark, a family of deep-sea sharks with this as the first species yet known from the region.  Most deep-sea sharks are dark brown or black to blend in with the darkness of the depths, but some species, like the lanternsharks, have bioluminescent organs that glow a shining pale green. This adaptation may either be to attract mates, maintain group cohesion in a school, lure smaller invertebrates within snapping range of their mouth, or possibly to create a halo-like effect to mediate the downwelling light from above and the tell-tale shadow a predator might see from below, making them effectively invisible. The newly described Ninja Lanernshark seemed to have few of these glow-in-the-dark organs, appearing less like a shark jack-o-lantern and more like a Japanese ninja dressed in black, and using their dark visage to their advantage, so prey may never see it coming. When Victoria consulted her young cousins to help with a common name for this new species, there were many options from the excited shark-loving kids, but Ninja Lanternshark, honed down from Super Ninja Shark, seemed appropriate.

The scientific name was of course in honor of Jaws author Peter Benchley. Several decades earlier I worked with him during a shark conservation program through the Cal Academy, and he admitted – what I had already heard through many other people – that he carried a burden of regret for the violent backlash against sharks unintentionally instigated by his book.  For years afterward, he was not just an advocate for sharks, but a tireless campaigner in promoting ocean conservation. Long after his death, the Benchley Awards fund those who share his dream. Coincidentally, this year was the 40th anniversary of the publication of Jaws, and Victoria already knew Benchely’s widow, who was told about the new shark bearing her husband’s name. After several months of measurements, comparisons with other known species, and countless revisions of the manuscript, it was submitted to the Journal of the Ocean Sciences foundation, one of the rare but essentially important journals that still publishes species descriptions of fishes, and more importantly, one with open access, making this shark species immediately available to the world just this week. The ‘discovery’ of a new species of shark means nothing until a detailed, peer-reviewed study is finally made public.  Fortunately, the bottles of Clicquot can still be popped.

Vasquez, V.E., D.A. Ebert, and D.J. Long.  2015. Etmopterus benchleyi n. sp., a new lanternshark (Squaliformes: Etmopteridae) from the central eastern Pacific Ocean. Journal of the Ocean Sciences Foundation, 17:43-55.

The post Ninja Lanternshark: the New Shark Species You Will Never See Coming first appeared on Deep Sea News.

1) Cockles got feet, and they know how to use ’em. This isn’t a tongue, or some other fleshy pink appendage, but rather a foot, and a long, distensible, and flexible one at that. When in the sand, this foot extends deep into the sediment, and as it contracts, it pulls the shell down into the sand beyond the eyes of its predators. When you dine on cockles, this is what you eat.

2) Trippy aquatic castanets? Ghost shell from a Japanese horror movie? Nope, this is a scallop doing what scallops do for much of their life – trying to get the heck away from a predator. Unlike cockles that hide beneath the sand, the muscular adductor that snaps the shell shut creates a jet of water that moves them in short, jerky blasts through the water. While their escape plan isn’t all that great, it may just be good enough to get out of the path of slow-moving starfish, their most feared predators.

3) You can almost hear the thumping oonce oonce oonce rave beats where the disco clam lives. It’s not really a clam at all, but a very flamboyant bivalve called the Electric Flame Scallop. Their light show pulsates within the fleshy mantle, making small mesmerizing blasts of light. Unlike most respectable sea creatures, they don’t generate bioluminescence, instead they reflect ambient light through a thin layer of silica microspherules embedded in their flesh, making the light appear as electrical currents in that outer layer of skin. The hot-pink feather boa of tentacles may give them additional glam-rock cred, but they also contain distasteful sulfur compounds, so the blinking lights may give potential predators a fair warning for the subsequent mouthful of regret.

4) Octopus are (literally) cold-blooded killers, and they’ve got a whole toolkit of ways to subdue different kinds of prey. With clams, they grasp the shell with their tentacles, and using a sharp tooth-studded tongue, drill a small hole through the shell and inject a paralytic venom. The drugged clam relaxes its grip and they octopus can easily pry the shell open. With the former tenant now lunch and just a fading memory, the octopus takes over the clam’s home and uses the thick shell for protection from its own predators, keeping one eye open for danger.

5) Squee Alert! Bears and clams rarely meet, but when they do the results can be sickeningly adorable. Grizzly bears along the Pacific Coast often forage for marine invertebrates at low tide, and have even been seen pawing through the sand for clams. This young grizzly is learning the art of clam digging, yet hasn’t perfected the technique, and now has a huge cockle clamped to one of its claws. You’re Welcome!

The post Five Mind-Blowing Bivalve GIFs That Will Blow Your Mind – Your Blown Mind Won’t Believe #6! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The Tongue that Bites

Take this shell for example, so smooth it’s hard to tell if it was even in focus when photographed, is that of the Flamingo Tongue snail (Cyphoma gibbosum, Ovulidae). With satin pastel hues of pink and orange, the shell is worthy of a Miami Art Deco speakeasy, but the mantle that shrouds the shell adds a flair of early 1960’s cubist psychedelia. Most are barely

longer than an inch in length as adults, but size doesn’t matter since what they eat are the tiny, succulent coral-like polyps that make up the colonies within a sea fan. In the warm, shallow Caribbean Sea, a Flamingo Tongue Snail will graze on a sea fan, scraping and plucking out polyps, leaving a stark, lifeless trail behind. In areas where mollusk-eating fishes have been eliminated, the absence of their natural predators causes the snail population to explode, wreaking long-term and widespread damage to the slow-growing sea fans and the habitats they create.

Oyster Shooter

Who doesn’t love oysters? Ok, except vegetarians, and sure, those with shellfish allergies, but slurping down a raw oyster with a dab of Tabasco sauce and a squeeze of lime followedby an ice-cold lager is a marine biologist’s equivalent to a dose of Ativan. This water-worn little shell, less than two inches long, also loves oysters, but eats them in an entirely different way. The Japanese Oyster Drill (Ocenebra inornata, Muricidae) is far too small to eat an entire oyster, and too weak to pry open the shell, so it tries an entirely different method, one that you would expect in some freaky David Cronenberg film. The radula that in most species of snails are used as a rasp to scrape food off a

substrate, say algae off a rock or bits of meat off a dead fish. In this species, the radula is developed into an abrasive augur-like structure that can literally drill through the shell of other mollusks, and in particular, the sedentary oyster. Secretion of acidic enzymes through the proboscis containing the drill softens up the shell to make drilling quicker. Once the shell is perforated, the snail will then suck out the oyster’s fluids and soft tissues. Even more interesting, the evolution of a drill-like radula has been achieved independently in several different unrelated

lineages of predatory snails. But too many oyster drills can wreak havoc in an oyster bed, and this species in particular has been accidentally introduced into ecosystems far outside eastern Asia, proving them to be a serious invasive pest in regional shellfish industries.

Neritic Nosferatu
If you thought that a marine snail with an auger-like set of teeth drilling into an oyster to

suck out its juices was weird, I’m going to up the ante. As you’ve read in various postings about marine gastropods, you know the tooth-studded radula is a diverse and effective organ to acquire food. But scraping and drilling are just a few of the adaptations among marine snails, and this ruggedly handsome Cooper’s Nutmeg snail (Cancellaria cooperi, Cancellariidae) has another trick. Its sharp, almost scalpel-like teeth bite a small slit into their sleeping prey, and when the prey begins bleeding, their proboscis is pressed against the wound to casually sip the flowing blood. A vampire snail on its own seems earn

enough weirdness points, but it doesn’t stop there. Cooper’s Nutmeg seems to be an ectoparasite specializing on the California Electric Ray (Torpedo californica), a fish with high enough voltage to knock out any potential prey and foe alike, but somehow it doesn’t seem to detect the snail. Experiments in aquarium settings, as well as observations in the wild, suggests this snail specializes only on electric rays, with some observations showing over a dozen snails feeding simultaneously off a single ray, and has yet to be documented feeding on any other species of fish.

Cone of Silence

Last up in our series of marine gastropods and their strange adaptations for feeding is a good candidate for the next campy horror film. You may remember from past episodes that

cone snails (Conidae) have a highly-specialized harpoon-like radula and associated venom gland that makes them highly toxic predators. The Geography Cone (Conus geographus) is a slow, silent hunter on the midnight reefs where it seeks out sleeping reef fishes (yes, fish do sleep) by their acute sense of smell. Once within close range of a fish, the large mouth, really an expandable funnel-shaped shroud, releases a complex cocktail of nearly two dozen different paralytic toxins called the “nirvana cabal” including insulin that causes the prey to become lethargic by creating hypoglycemic shock, like the knock-out gas in an old James Bond movie. When the dazed fish is engulfed by the mouth, the harpoon is fired into the fish, quickly killing them. One look at the aperture of the shell shows an opening much wider than most other species of cone snails, and this allows the snail to swallow the entire fish into the main chamber of the shell. While their venom is primarily used for prey capture, it can be turned defensively on their predators. In fact, the Geography Cone is regarded as one of the most venomous of marine animals, and is responsible for no less than 30 documented cases of death in humans, though the actual number is likely much higher since traces of the venom are difficult to detect and effects of the toxins may mimic other more common causes of death, like heart attack.

The post Malacology Monthly: It Eats Whaaaat? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Scorpion Without a Sting

This leggy shell belongs to a group of gastropods called the Spider Conchs, and this particular species is the Scorpion Spider Conch (Lambis scorpio), which can neither bite nor sting. The group gets its name from the leg-like extensions along the edge of the expanded opening of the shell (aperture) that serve no function in locomotion. Living in the intertidal and shallow subtidal mud, sand, and coral rubble where the surge of waves can be intense, researchers believe these spines serve to prevent the snail from rolling on the bottom. As an added benefit, long, thick spines could make it more difficult for mollusk-eating fish to eat the Scorpion Spider Conch. But as nobody has ever conducted any field studies or laboratory simulations of how these spiny shells actually function, they are untested assumptions. If scientists knew everything, there would be no work for graduate students.

Spiny Shield

Limpets rarely get much respect among malacologists, let alone shell collectors, yet they have a subtle magnificence. I bring you the Bearded Limpet (Scutellastra barbara; Patellidae). Mollusks that live in the intertidal zone are the cage-fighters of the invertebrate world. You’ve got to be extra tough to withstand tons of force from a crushing wave, survive the hot and dry exposure from low tide, and have sure-fire ways to avoid being eaten by predators both on the land and in the water. This shell has a series of strong ridges that radiate out from the crest of this pyramid-like shell to the outer margins of the shell. Architecturally, these ridges act as girders not just strengthening the shell, but directing the power of a breaking wave to the outside edge of the shell. This causes the power of the wave to be divided across the shell along these girders, but since these ridges end in spines that are in contact with the rocks, the wave force actually causes the shell to be pressed against the rock, holding it in place as the wave is breaking around the shell. Further, the bumpy, spiny edge of the shell could also make it harder for limpet enemy number one – the African Oystercatcher – to eat it. The bill of the oystercatcher is shaped like the flat end of a standard screw driver, and the oystercatcher wedges this sharp edge under the shell and pries it off, flips it over, and scrapes out the fleshy tidbits. The uneven spiny edge makes it much more difficult for the oystercatcher to slip the bill underneath the shell, and theoretically a few more Bearded Limpets survive to pass on this morphology to the next generation.

Twice the Spines, Twice the Fun

The Spiny Oysters (Spondylus: Spondylidae) such as this dandy Spondylus foliaceus, are a widespread group in tropical and subtropical waters, shallow and deep seas, with a diversity of colors and shapes, but they are all united in the spines, thorns, and prickly bits that cover their shell. The function of these spines, as imagined by unimaginative malacologists, it to protect the oyster from piscine predators, but that’s what they always say. Three other possible ways that could potentially increase the survival of the spiny oysters are as follows: (1) these spines could act to deter the settling of barnacles, anemones, and even other oysters on their shell. Acting as a figurative layer of barbed-wire the spines keep other large invertebrates from plopping-down on their shell and growing on them, weighting them down, and competing for food; (2) the expanded surface area these spines provide could promote the settlement and growth of other small marine organisms. Algae, bryozoans, and encrusting sponges, could provide a natural camouflage to better conceal these oysters on the sea floor; and (3) these spines could act as a ‘baffle’ to slow water flowing around the clam. As you all remember from your hydrophysics courses, moving water carries objects (sand particles, plankton, delicious detritus, etc.), and the faster the water moves, the larger particles and the greater number of particles the flow can carry. If there are impediments to water flow, such as dozens of spines on an oyster’s shell, the water slows and drops its particles. So, the spiny oyster’s spines may act to slow moving water around it, and that water would drop its suspended detritus and plankton right around the edge of the shell where the oyster is drawing in that water to filter out a meal. Or maybe it’s just to deter fish from eating them after all.

Shell Superstar

Behold the Japanese Star Turban shell (Guildfordia yoka; Turbinidae), a flat and radially spiny gastropod from the western Pacific Ocean that looks like a nasty weapon hurled in a kung-fu movie. One hypothesis concerning their spines is that it helps to distribute the weight of the snail outward so that it doesn’t sink into the soft deep-sea muds where it lives. Where broad, flat spines might accomplish this feat, their thin, narrow spines would seemingly cut into the soft mud, offering no real support for the weight of the shell in the center. But dang it if those spines don’t give up clues themselves; because they often show signs of breakage and regeneration, like one of the spines seen in this shell, they are likely for protection from predators. If the spines don’t actively repel foraging deep-sea fishes by a painful jab in the roof of the mouth, the spines may simply make the snail too big to even swallow in the first place. When the Japanese Star Turban survives a potential attack with a few spines broken, the snail will repair or regrow the protective spines to live another day.

Spines Fit for a Goddess

Sorry that I didn’t mention there would be a final exam for the end of this post, so sharpen that No. 2 pencil. Spines on shells, much like a Swiss army knife, can serve one or many functions. They deter predators, strengthen the shell, and support the animal in various ways. But this gastropod shell, the Venus Comb Murex (Murex pecten; Muricidae) is the most glorious example of spines. As the name might suggest, it is the natural comb that keeps a sexy Roman goddess’ hair smooth and manageable. After all, as legend has it, Venus was born of sea foam, and you can imagine what ruin the tides can do to her hairdo. But no, none of the ancient texts or depictions in paintings, mosaics, or bas-reliefs show Venus using this shell as a styling tool. So then, what evolutionary, ecological, and/or morphological function do you expect the spines to serve? Watch the video below for some clues:

The post Malacology Monthly: Spines and How to Use Them first appeared on Deep Sea News.

My heart aches deeper and deeper with each new horror story I hear from scientists affected by shutdown. Especially in Antarctica.

The research season in Antarctica typically starts around now, when things warm up enough to be merely frigid and scientists from around the world flock far south to conduct studies that affect our understanding of climate change, volcanoes, the family life of Weddell seals and much more. But with the United States government partly shut down, federally financed research has come to a halt for Dr. Levy [Jospeh Levy, researcher at UT Austin] and hundreds of other Americans. Even if a budget deal is struck, these scientists will have less time on the ice, and some will lose a full year’s worth of work as the narrow window of productive time closes….the effects will be felt beyond the inconvenience of a single summer…gaps in the record may damage data sets built on decades of work. “It’s tragic.” (via New York Times article)

You can read countless other stories online: Dawn Sumner at UC Davis (one of our lab’s close collaborators), James Collins at Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute – the list just keeps going on…and on and on and on.

And the impacts are particularly devastating for young scientists. The postdocs whose job prospects will depend on their Antarctic data. The new Assistant Professors whose tenure decisions will hinge on the success of their newly funded NSF projects. The undergrads and graduate students who can’t even bloody submit their research proposals (grant submission website are shut down as well!). I was visiting Gretchen Hofman at UC Santa Barbara last Friday while she was frantically arranging an NPR interview on this critical topic (the Antarctic program was cancelled while one of her postdocs, Amanda Kelley, was on the plane to McMurdo. Amanda only found out the news when her plane landed):

…one of the casualties, one of the things that we stand to lose right now is important productivity for junior scientists, people who are just starting their careers…I think one of the examples I can think of is someone at the University of Alabama. Her name is Samantha Hansen. I know this really well ’cause last season I was there. Samantha – Sam – and I were roommates in our science dorm. Sam’s a geologist and she deployed these very interesting, complex remote sensing instruments out in the Antarctic mountains. She’s interested in studying the processes that, you know, sort of essentially shape our planet and make mountains. And Sam’s instruments right now have data that’s really important to her, important to the science world. And if we can’t go get them, the data will be lost, the instruments could be buried in snow and it’ll be a complete loss for this charismatic young scientist. (Transcript from NPR)

What can we do about all this? I’m still struggling to figure this out, but I’m definitely angry and frustrated. I signed this petition at Change.org: “Don’t Stop the Science! Congress: Shutdown Exemption for the United States Antarctic Program” started by Richard Jeong who works as a contractor at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. I’m also going to write to my senator and representatives, and I urge everyone who loves marine science to do the same.

Doing science is hard enough. Getting grants funded is an even tougher game. But to have your funded research cancelled at the last minute (ruining observation data, or losing expensive instruments)? That shit cray. In a very sick way.

The post The slow strangling of marine science careers, as the Government Shutdown drags on first appeared on Deep Sea News.

My favorite time to do Marine Biology is at 2am. In Manhattan.

New York rivals London for the most fabulous cocktails on earth. City life + good cocktails are a critical part of my inspiration as a scientist, and I’m always ecstatic when my work brings me to NYC. I’ve been to countless foreign cities, but Manhattan dominates the list for the best cocktails I’ve had in my life.

One of my new favorite bars in New York is The Beagle on Avenue A in Alphabet City. Not only is the bar named after Darwin’s infamous ship, but they’ve got pictures of his finches on the menu!

Warning: Last time I went to The Beagle I spent $70 on cocktails. Your bank account will not be happy, but your tastebuds may reach Enlightenment.

If you like Sherry you will be in trouble. Sherry cocktails are a particular specialty of the Beagle, and I was woefully ignorant of their deliciousness until two months ago! And as a tribute to my new travel discovery, I bring you a sherry cocktail recipe to drink as you wistfully peruse their website:

Sherry Cobbler

The “King of Sherry Cocktails” according to the New York Times:

In a shaker half-filled with chunky ice, put 3 ounces amontillado sherry, 1 level bar spoon superfine sugar and 3 quarter-inch-thick wheels of orange and a quarter-inch-thick wheel of lemon. Shake well. Strain into a footed tumbler or julep glass filled with small pellets of ice. Garnish with another wheel of orange and of lemon, and a mint sprig. Drink through a long straw. [recipe from the New York Times, of course]

The post Traveling = An excuse to drink cocktails! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

My colleague Rafael de la Parra is the executive director of Ch’ooj Ajauil (Mayan for “Blue Realm”), a long time research partner of Georgia Aquarium and an excellent naturalist; he knows more about whale sharks in this area than anyone, and he’s a dab hand with marine mammals and other pelagic (in the water column, i.e. not on the bottom) species as well.  We headed out on Rafa’s boat, Grampus, for a day of whale shark photo identification in the waters east of Isla Contoy, an insular national park about 20 miles north-north-east of Cancun.  The wind and waves were against us and I didn’t have high hopes; indeed, the Harbor Master only opened the harbor for small boat activity at the last minute.  It was a predictably long and sloppy ride to the area of interest, but along the way I was encouraged to see some turtles (las tortugas), a curious group of spotted dolphins (delfin) and an abundance of flying fish (pez volador).  Eventually we reached a small flotilla of ecotourism boats, which gather as predictably around whale sharks as the frigate birds do above schools of baitfish.

Despite the conditions it turned out to be a truly magical day!  The whale sharks, perhaps 70-100 of them, were clustered especially tightly and it was not unusual to put your mask under the water and be able to see three or four simultaneously.  In fact, it makes it hard to get good photo ID images, because they are just coming too thick and fast, which I guess is a good problem to have on any day!

The ecotour boats gradually petered away until we were left alone to snorkel with the animals in the vast expanse of the offshore waters of the warm clear Caribbean.  I love it when it’s like that, because without distractions for us or the animals, behaviours are more normal and your eyes gradually open to all the other things that are going on around you.  And that’s when you realise that this patch of ocean, seemingly empty except for, you know, 100 whale sharks (!), is in fact replete with life.

Most obvious among the whale sharks were a number of manta rays.  These graceful pelagic animals are filter feeders just like the whale sharks so it’s no surprise that they often show up together.  I was lucky enough to experience several encounters with the same ray over the course of the day: a male missing one of his cephalic lobes, which are normally used for steering (like canards on aircraft) and to direct food into their capacious mouths.  Each time he found a dense patch of food (in this case almost certainly tuna eggs), he would barrel roll over and over, seemingly oblivious to his new dance partner floating enraptured above.

In between whale sharks, which are almost exclusively feeding at the very surface, it pays to look down deeper, perhaps 40-50ft.  Down there can be seen other graceful residents of the pelagic zone.  Mustard-coloured cownosed rays form large schools, gliding so slowly that they appear to hang suspended in the water.  Swifter are the mobulas or devil rays, which look like miniature manta rays and fly in formations of black white and grey against the cobalt blue of the deeper water.

Fish are there too.  I was buzzed by half a dozen small mahi mahi, which passed by so quickly that I barely had time to snap a picture as they passed.  Other fish hitch their wagon to the bigger animals; every whale shark is accompanied by a plethora of remoras, big and small, hitching a ride on the fins, riding alongside, or even swimming in and out of the mouth and gills.  Rainbow runner and small schools of sardines draft along behind or below their giant spotty compadres.

I even picked up my own hangers on: a pair of baby jacks that acted as pilot fish, riding the bow wave in front of my mask as I kicked hard to keep up with the sharks and rays, and getting in the way of my photographic efforts!

On the ride back to port (now thankfully with a gentler, following sea), I chatted with the others in our group about the feelings you get from these sorts of experiences and we concluded that you can’t really know unless you see it for yourself.  The two biggest things for me are first, the sense that the seemingly empty ocean really isn’t, that even in the absence of bottom features or structure of any kind, the pelagic zone is alive with diversity large and small, and second that this is a truly alien world here on earth.  We can intrude from the edges, for a brief period, and admire the grace and adaptive successes of the animals that live here, but this is not our world, not really, except in so far as we are stewards of the sea.  That feeling of having a window into another world must be a glimmer of how astronauts felt the first time they set foot on the moon.  It’s comforting to know that there are still amazing biological phenomena to see here on earth, in the oceans, if we just take the time, make an effort and peel back a corner of the curtain to peek into the fantastic world of the pelagic zone.

The post TGIF – Magical Quintana Roo first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Consider the viper fish with its capacious maw and manifold needle teeth

Or the deep sea angler, a shapeless blob except for a massive tooth-filled mouth and tiny beady eyes

Or the stoplight loosejaw, with a truly massive dislocatable jaw, teeth in its throat and “night vision” light organs that illuminate hapless victims unable to see the wavelength they emit.

All of these fish hail from that vast, cold, crushing, silent perpetual night that is the abyssal depths of the ocean.  They are creepy, there’s no doubt about it: black, flabby, toothy and generally unpleasant looking.  But why is it that?  They are just fish like any others, supremely well-adapted to their habitat in fact, and utterly harmless to humans.  A loosejaw presents no more threat to me than does a bubble-eyed goldfish.  Indeed, 99.999% of people will never even see one.  But that visceral response is undeniable – they just LOOK creepy and dangerous, so what’s going on?

I don’t think anyone has studied this phenomenon for fish, at least not that I can find, but psychologists HAVE studied why people have similar visceral responses to spiders, snakes and other creepy crawly things.   It seems that humans are hard wired to fear angularity and dark colours, combined with unpredictable movements.  Sometimes just one of these properties is enough, like the stereotypical response of those afraid of mice to their scurrying movements – to jump up on a chair – but this is not always the case.  Frogs, for example, move in every bit as unpredictable a way as spiders, but because they are rounded, with big eyes and pleasantly coloured/patterned skin, they are seemingly forgiven.  If an animal happens to have all three properties, then it’s prime phobia-fodder.  By way of evidence, I offer the following two spiders:

The redback on the right has the unholy trinity – angularity, dark contrasty colours and unpredictable movements.  The jumping spider on the left however, almost looks cute, with his gentle lines, mild green colour and big doe eyes.  So when people say they are afraid of spiders, what they really mean is that they’re afraid of redbacks and their ilk; plenty of spiders are perfectly innocuous.  Indeed, they are not afraid of spiders per se, they are actually afraid of the apparent angularity, darkness and unpredictability of the redback.  There is an important difference though.  Both the redback and the jumping spider are ruthless predators of insects, but only the redback is dangerous to people, so maybe natural selection was onto something when it hard wired these responses in our brains.

What about the deep sea fish though?  Surely we can’t have evolved to react the same to them as we do to spiders?  Unless you have a million dollar submersible, you’ll never even encounter one, and if you did it almost certainly wouldn’t hurt you.  The only thing I can think of is that they just got caught up in the evolutionary cross-fire, so to speak.  Their adaptations to deep sea life – dark skin, angular jaws, pointy teeth – just happen to trigger in us hard-wired responses meant to serve a totally different purpose: keeping us safe from those terrestrial critters who can in fact, do us harm.

So, this Halloween,  instead of vilifying a gallery of deep sea critters with no more control over their colour and shape than we do, I, for one, am going to strive to look instead at the beauty in deep sea fishes that comes from the perfection of form for its evolved function.  I just wish I could get rid of my dopey looking goldfish now, and replace it with a nice gulper eel or viper fish.

The post Is this fish evil? first appeared on Deep Sea News.