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Sunset at Stonehenge

Photographer: Unknown

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4 shades of blue captured in a single image in Antarctica

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lost in the tides

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Antarctica

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Ride the waves

thurstonphoto

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Introducing your new favorite animal of the deep—the wonderful whalefish.

Whalefish live in the inky depths below 3,000 feet called the midnight zone. Their eyes are poorly developed and small—in fact, they lack lenses and are not even capable of forming images. Instead, they rely on a network of sensory pores to feel vibrations in the water and allow the whalefish to detect when predators or prey are near.

Like many deep-sea animals, whalefishes have a brilliant reddish coloration. Red light doesn’t travel far in seawater and can’t penetrate into the deep sea, so anything red appears black. This intense red color helps a whalefish disappear into the darkness to ambush unsuspecting prey or avoid a hungry predator.

Most research on these fishes has been based on specimens collected by deep-water trawl nets. MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles very rarely encounter these obscure fishes. In the more than 30,000 hours of video MBARI’s ROVs have recorded, we’ve logged just 16 observations. But each time we see one, we get a chance to learn more about this remarkable resident of the ocean’s midnight zone.

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photos of the sea during yesterday's gale, taken from ardnamurchan point

instagram

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It’s a lovely day to watch the waves

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Sound on to hear the water running through pebbles

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Beroe forskalii by Alexander Semenov

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Mariah Carey photographed by Deborah Feingold, 1990.