#ocean floor

[coco-wheats]

posting it again for all the benthicheads out there

[sayuyuupi]

Under the Sea 🎶🫧🐠

[the-briny-bulletin]

Did you know that 4000 metres bellow the ocean there are chemosynthetic bacteria that are specifically evolved to digest the wood of trees that have grown on land?

The wood on the sea floor can come from trees that fall into lakes and end up in the ocean, or wooden ships that have sunken. (Called 'Wood-falls')

The reason why deep marine organisms are able to digest wood despite never seeing the light of day, let alone a plant - since plants are unable to grow in the deep ocean because of a lack of sunlight - is because the ocean is so isolated and scarce of food that when a new food source is suddenly available, organisms rapidly evolve to be able to eat it.

This is called 'Adaptive Radiation', and can also occur on isolated islands.

[pangeen]

" B U D D I E S " //© jferraragallery

[mapsontheweb]

Age of the Ocean Floor, seen from all perspectives

[artofjim]

Yeti Crab Warrior for Mermay last year

[maclanahan--mermaid-comics]

It's been a while since I have draw mermaid Juniper AU.

Pose reference from @adorkastock, but I can't find where I found the image, so go check out her sketch app cause it is excellent!

[ema0rsully]

Imagine this.

Danny, Jimmy and Timmy realised their portal machine somehow was broken and they had no way to teleport to Spongebob’s dimension.

In a desperate attempt, Timmy uses his fairies' last magic to teleport them somewhere near Spongebob’s house.

That fails.

They get teleported to the island

They decide its the best they’ve got so they gear up and dive in.

Jimmy came prepared with inventions to help them breathe so it was good until they have to go through each layer of the ocean.

Then they start to see the most other-worldly creatures of the marine life. And they wondered how their friend even survived down here.

I like to think they were tiny like the size of Spongebob. I like to think humans in Spongebob’s dimension are like, titans.

I want them to explore the horrors that lie on the ocean floor.

[lionfloss]

Sea Slug egg spiral

[nrdynobody]

Astroscopus guttatus, or the Northern Stargazer is a sedentary ambush predator of the western Atlantic, at depths of, roughly, 36 meters (120 feet). They spend the majority of their adult life buried in the sand of the ocean floor.

The name of their genus (as well as their english name) is derived from the fact that its eyes are positioned on the top of its head, allowing it to see above it. It can also extend its eyes temporarily by filling sacs behind them with liquid. Its body is adapted to its sedentary lifestyle, with frills covering its mouth to prevent sand from falling in, the uncommon ability to breathe through a pair of nostrils and shovel like pectoral fins. What really makes this fish distinct is its ability to discharge electric shocks from an electric organ on its forehead as a defense mechanism (the indent above its eyes).

They live almost completely solitary lives, only interacting during mating season, or the occasional larvae cannibalizing another larvae (it's technically an interaction lol). They will attempt to eat pretty much anything small and thats foolish enough to get close to it. They have few predators (barring humans) due to their electrical defense.

sorry for the lack of pictures, these fish are pretty ugly + theres not a lot of pictures of the correct species.

[missicebutterfly]

Pink orange seahorses

[katjadarkrider]

Kelpie

Drawing from 1st January 2023

Time: 8h

[fromthedust]

whale fall on the California coast

https://www.montereyherald.com/2019/11/19/life-after-death-whale-corpse-offers-an-underwater-feast-a-mile-down/

[the-briny-bulletin]

W h a l e f a l l

C.W: Whale corpses

When a whale carcass floats down to the ocean floor in the abyssal zone, it creates an ecosystem called a 'whalefall', where a variety of deep marine life can live and be sustained for over 50 years.

This ecosystem has 4 stages:

Mobile Scavengers Stage

The first stage is when scavengers from around the plain gather to feast on the whales flesh - Typically by hagfish and sleeper sharks - until there is just bone.

This stage can last for months or up to 1.5 years.

Enrichment Opportunists Stage

This stage is when smaller scavengers - such as octopuses, crustaceans and molluscs - gather around the whale looking for tissue and bits of carcass left over from the first stage. This is also when osedax (boneworms) arrive and comsume the community of bacteria that eat the bone lipids.

This stage can last months or up to 5 years.

Sulfophilic Stage

In this stage the majority of scavengers have left and in its place are the boneworms and the community of chemosynthetic bacteria that break down the lipids in the bones and produces sulphide that can be consumed by other organisms like worms or shrimp.

This stage can last over 50 years.

Reef Stage

The final stage is when all the consumable material have been exhausted and the leftover bone creates a hard surface for abyssal filter feeders to latch onto. A 'reef' of sorts.

Whalefalls are one of many essential food-falls that sustain life at the bottom of the ocean, and are p cool i think anyway im done w my autism rant goodbye

[themesopelagiczone]

earth fact time. in the deep ocean there are things called brine pools, which are essentially lakes of water separate from the ocean water. they're formed when water seeping through the ocean floor mixes with salt deposits, so the actual brine pools themselves are too salty and too toxic for most things to live in. but because they're so mineral rich, there's a bunch of really cool things living around them!

some examples include mussels, crabs, echinoderms, and sea cucumbers.

oceanx | oceanexplorer (noaa) | la times

photos: nautilus live x | x

[bradandchris]

Well, that was that then. Brad had himself a New Years Resolution. His resolution was to not have a resolution for the year that was new in the moment where he was. That was on the beach in Santa Monica at the end of 2023.

While he was there staring into 2024, he was also giving up lent for lent, and trading in Columbus Day for an Akron knight. He would just need to convince Elton John to take a holiday to Ohio in October. It was a good thing leaves died pretty. He could use that to his advantage.

If that didn’t work out, Brad would try a different time of day. Akron Dawn for example could score an obvious sponsorship assuming people in Ohio did their dishes upon waking up. It sounded like something people in sensibly sized Midwest cities might do.

The notion never crossed his mind in Brad’s 22 years living in Los Angeles. Why would anyone born and bred in Southern California ground themselves where it could crack open and swallow you whole at any second? Midwestern sensibility just didn’t stack up here.

Akron was in Ohio right? Brad could never be sure even with a smart phone in his hand. Miss Information was everywhere and there were no places to hide. How would you know where to go anyway?

All the cities in Ohio looked exactly the same to Brad. You could be in Toledo or Cincinnati, and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference even if you were at the local library checking out books. As long as ‘Ohio’ was somewhere on your library card or drivers license, you were golden.

At least that’s what Brad imagined. The locals likely didn’t feel the same way.

On the eve of a change in one of many calendars used across the globe, Brad took a minute reflect upon what had yet to happen by asking questions in the present tense.

Did all the oceans in California look the same to people from Ohio? Those from the two bucks an eye state (post inflation), were human beings dealing with a relative relative spendy reality. That part was clear. The rest of it got fuzzy as he didn’t know anyone from Ohio he could ask.

Brad wasn’t sure how many oceans he was looking at in the first place. They all kinda mixed together with few if any official boundaries. To call the water in front of him by one name took it from Will Rogers in Cali all the way to Bondi in Australia, but it was hardly the same water. The whole thing read as a gross over generalization as everything Pacific.

Each day it was less and less surprising to Brad that more than 90% of the sea floor failed to be mapped. We as a species held not a clue as to what was down there yet some of us were already taking tours of outer space which was technically nothing itself. Was that not why we called it space?

Whatever.

Brad didn’t want to put too much into space tourism or an overrated holiday like NYE, or even Christmas for that matter…

Brad stopped himself there. If he took that thought any further he could start getting answers. That could take him into resolution territory where he resolved to not go yet already was.

The annual practice never played out well for Brad despite being out himself. While others made money Brad beat himself up. By the President’s Day circuit party he was always in a downward spiral. If Brad ever OD’d it would likely be there smack dab in the depths of the Southern California rainy season swallowed whole by the first round of judgement preliminaries for White Party in Palm Springs.

Seeing where he was, Brad pulled himself off the bitter party of one path to that of personal responsibility. No one besides himself stuck around any NYE resolution to ensure he followed through. It may be paid for but did it matter where the money came from? While the commitment was squarely his, it often turned out the enthusiasm was not.

Brad paused to fix the back of his swimmers. They began riding his youthful 22 year old butt muscles while doing all this thinking. Did he really workout every day just so his clothes could malfunction?

Maybe. He could def take the notion somewhere sexy. Too bad there wasn’t a pen and paper around. Was this why people wrote their name in the sand? That whole notion read downright silly standing so close to the world’s biggest eraser.

When all was said and done, the greatest part about having a perky butt wasn’t sex or attention. It was having a place to set things down where no pockets were available. Brad always offered the space to others where he could think enough to do so. Ironically, the last thing he wanted to be was an ass.

The notion spurred another thought. Brad would ask Chris to look for a date on his butt when he came back from the concession stand with lunch. All this male beauty comes with a shelf life apparently so his boyfriend should probably know when to stop eating it. To that, and out of respect for himself, he should probably check Chris’ butt too. Brad needed some action and the whole notion just brought forth was good enough to jumpstart a very fun afternoon.

These things only needed to be paper thin with two men in the equation. An impromptu hamster inspection of the men’s locker room at the local gay watering hole instigated a wild three way with Brad and Chris’s neighbor Luke just a few hours earlier. Unsurprisingly, not a single hamster turned up at the gym, but the whole debacle did put a new spin on wood shavings.

A rouge wave reached high enough to grab Brad’s attention and bring him back to the present tense. Brad looked at his phone but he didn’t have any gauge as to when he and his thinking drifted off. Well, at least he came around this time with his swimmers still on. He lost two pair just in the last 24 hours.

Now where was Chris with the food? Brad was craving curly fries and a big fat dill pickle.