#pneumatocyst

[burning-sol]

did a sketch of gillion because once again working on designs. he looking so funky. i would go into details but i dont have the time rn so just look at him.

edit: okay!! some details!! there is definitely a lot of similar features but also some changes. firstly, the old colour pallet didn't have enough variation of tone so i changed it, now colours should be more distinct and easy to read. secondly, i changed the slitted eyes because as much as i love them i think gillion having googly fish eyes would be freakier and that's what we love to see. thirdly, you may notice a lot of these circular shapes scattered about, these are based on pneumatocysts (the thing that gives seaweed buoyancy) <- ive always wanted gillion's hair to look seaweed like and i thought this was a good choice, the lines are also a little reminiscent of whiskers ig. teeth are the same sort of sharp and uneven teethies (which he has several rows of) except i saw other people giving him teeth that jutted out the sides and couldn't help myself. the feet are meant to be like flippers, the tail is based on a shark, the eyelashes are inspired by frozen eyelashes, markings are round now to imitate the moon, nothing is covering the shoulders anymore (i will try to be less of a coward abt anatomy)... lastly, at the hips i previously had a rope around gillion's waist with cloth attached and sand dollars as accessories. its still sort of the same but the sand dollars are shaped and used like docking cleat (i think thats what its called). so that's everything.

[cyberneticfamiliar]

Colossal chimeric aquatic plants towering from the bottom of the ocean to  the surface. these organisms were genetically engineered primarily to maximize biodiversity in the barren deep open oceans both on earth and other worlds, a task which is accomplished by providing a massive new food source and secondly by producing and transporting oxygen to the bottom of the ocean inorder to combat anoxic conditions. As a rigid structure would be be reduced to splinters by ocean currents the ocean trees function much like scaled-up bull kelp with a flexible trunk kept upright by gas-filled pneumatocysts. ocean trees are the tallest living organisms in the known universe with an average height of 6000 meters though there are instances of them being larger with the largest being the Babel tree on the ocean planet of Khnum which is a staggering 11,200 meters sprouting from a deep sea trench.

[fullmusicbardsquared]

midstages for my ocean starters!

Sustipe, the Conservation Pokemon (grass/psychic): As they grow, they become more aware of the threats to their habitats. These pokemon fiercely defend their homes, to the point of gaining psychic abilities out of sheer willpower. (based on the ribboned pipefish + weedy seadragon, and kelp pneumatocysts and stipes. name = sustain + stipe)

Crownire, the Crown Pokemon (fire): After a growth spurt, they can no longer comfortably travel along the ocean floor, forcing them to become active hunters that boil their prey. The strain leads them to become surly and competitive, instead of friendly with their own kind. Their arms coil around their delicate faces in protection. (based on the crown of thorns starfish + shape of a nautilus, as well as princes. name = crown + fire + ire, bonus pun on the concept of crown fires)

Wailning, the Requiem Pokemon (water): The meat of Wailning is deliciously tender, and it’s so loved that they’re now extinct in the wild. Though they’re still calm and friendly, these pokemon are more secluded and melancholic, as if they know that their fellows are gone. Wailning also learns haunting sounds, calling out whenever they’re alone. (based on whale sharks + minke whales + whalesong, and whaling + shark finning. name = wail/wailing + whaling + finning)

(shiny concepts)

[your-god-empress-lavender]

y'know, we always hear about bioweapons as like bacteria and viruses that go around doing the murder murder, but like, wouldn't it be so much cooler (if less effective, but also much less likely to get back to the deployer) to use like a massive swarm of bombardier beetles that are engineered for maximum acid production and high hostility? or like a mycelial fungus that is designed for very fast growth and degrades structures. or terrifying crabs. or horrifying, gargantuan sea creatures. or seaweed which, instead of normal gas mixtures, produces an insane amount of carbon monoxide or ozone (or basically any very dangerous gas) in its pneumatocysts.

but like, what about bioarmour? what if we just had a thick colony of bacteria which produces a very hard material as a shield. it'd probably be heavy from all the water weight, so best for buildings or other immobile thingies, but like, make the bacteria produce hard, calcium rich chitin shells or something, or make it make little spheres of some hard ceramics (probably calcium based) that fill like 40% of the space so that it pretty much works like a normal bullet proof shield but it's alive and can heal. or a fucked up crab thing that just surrounds you, protruding limbs into the outside world. or what if we designed a breed of termite that would build massive nests and not be hostile. we could surround or cover buildings with massive termite mounds (they are strong enough to withstand bullets and the termites do fixing very fast). or what about engineering/breeding an organism to build themselves into humans. maybe to help with healing, maybe as protection, maybe to enable easier modifications, maybe to provide energy, maybe as companionship, or maybe as things that i can't think of. i know under capitalism any of these things would be used in an abusive relationship, but at least in my opinion, we should give back to any organism at least as much as they give us. (eg. a termite nest protects our buildings, so we provide them food and protect them whenever we can if they're doing badly, or if we have another organism growing into our bodies, we provide them with food and shelter and companionship if applicable (and we never abuse our friends)).

[life-around-me-yura15cbx]

Hormosira banksii, also known as Neptune's necklace, Neptune's pearls, sea grapes, or bubbleweed) is a species of seaweed (brown algae, Fucales) native to Australia and New Zealand. The genus Hormosira is monotypic and low genetic variation across the population. Hormosira is regarded as an ecosystem engineer or habitat former that occurs in large patches and outcompetes other algal species due to its high tolerance to desiccation. Hormosira is a food source for sea urchins, many small crustaceans, and some juvenile fish. The thallus of this species is made up of strings of olive-brown, spherical, gas-filled pneumatocysts. The spheres are buoyant and rise to the surface of the water during high tide, allowing plants to move with the flow of the current and obtain more sunlight. Из-за высокого содержания йода в этом виде тасманийским школьникам однажды рекомендовали съедать по шарику в день, чтобы предотвратить появление зоба.

Browns bay, Auckland

-36.7148249, 174.7502410

7QP2+33H Auckland

[softichill]

It's been depressing lately so let's talk about cool shit. Like praya dubia. Siphonophores are cool and this one is longer than a blue whale! It's second only to the bootlace worm in length with praya dubia being up to 160 feet of skinny-tinsel-hanging-from-a-string of an animal while the bootlace worm is 180 feet at max recorded length. Praya dubia has bioluminescence. That helps in the deep sea where the critter lives. There is pretty much only one picture of the thing available. I wish to pet it's bell as that is probably the only part that isn't filled with stinging cndocytes called nematocysts (Almost called them pneumatocysts oops.) Yes it could probably eat me. No I don't care. It turns to jelly at normal atmospheric pressure. Do not eat. Also if you've never heard The World Revolving on accordion you haven't lived. I have a vivid memory of riding one of the dinky automatic shopping carts to its station blasting that cover from my phone while cackling like a madman past my coworker. I am an unapologetic menace.

YEAAAA PRAYA DUBIA!!!!! I love those dudes SO much. They look like giant water centipedes from a distance they're so cool

I have in fact heard The World Revolving on an accordion before!!! In 2018 and 2019 I listened to so many covers/remixes of that song that I made an entire playlist for them. Hearing it on the accordion is eerily fitting and VERY chaos-inducing

My rec today is Kitty by Snail's House!! Super cute song, I've listened to it on loop recently and I'm still not tired of it

[crudlynaturephotos]

[dafodils-on-the-moon]

just found out that pneumatocysts (the air sacs on kelp) and nematocysts (the stinging cells found in cnidarians) are pronounced the exact same gosh-darn-ding-dang way and I am Livid

[noaasanctuaries]

Ready for a quick kelp lesson?

Kelp forests, like this one in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, are held down by holdfasts anchored to rocky substrates. Growing up towards the surface, gas bladders, called pneumatocysts, keep even the tallest kelp afloat. A giant kelp plant will have these bladders at the base of each blade, whereas bull kelp plants have only one that supports several blades near the surface. Can you tell which kelp plant is featured here? (Photo: Robert Schwemmer/NOAA. Image Description: Kelp forest moving with the waves and surrounded by schools of fish.)

[montereybayaquarium]

A buoyant Seaweed Sunday to all! Giant kelp can grow up to 175 feet tall, held aloft in the often-turbulent water by these gas-filled bladders, known as pneumatocysts.

[vampiricsheep]

Profile - Quincy

some of you may recognise this fella from my comic! If you'd rather learn about him through that, feel free to skip over this, but in all honesty knowing more about him going in might make things a little clearer!

Name: Quincy

Pronouns: typically he/him or they/them but no strong preference

Age: very, very, old but without a documented origin

Orientation: still learning

Species: some kind of merperson

Appearance

Quincy is 8ft long from scalp to tailfin, with a strong, muscular tail reminiscent of an alligator gar but with slightly rounder scales. humanoid body sections are all rather long, lean, and bony, but not without strength. While he is completely scaled, the scales are smaller and smoother the further up they are from his waist, and the scales on his face and hands are almost pebbly. His nails are long and clawed at their ends.

He has a prominent brow ridge and deep-set eyes, but no eyebrows. His eyes are yellow with fish-like rings in the iris. He has full but distinctly human lips and high cheekbones. Fin frills form his external "ears" and finely feathered gills are on either side of his neck.

His hair is long, thick, very waved, and contains bio-luminescent bulbs with appearances reminiscent of pneumatocysts in giant kelp. Water plants are also tangled into his hair, as it is quite long and impossible to simply tie back.

Quincy's scales are a vibrant purple that has highest saturation in his tail and dulls gradually from the waist up. His hair is vibrant purple like his tail, but much darker. Intense yellow bioluminescence shines from the space between his scales, the bulbs in his hair, and his eyes.

Abilities

Fish follow Quincy in a cloud when he swims past, and they become a near-mindless flurry of teeth and hunger in his presence. They will not attack him or each other, but tear any other flesh into shreds within seconds of proximity. For this reason, he typically gets less than half the yield from his hunts, but he doesn't mind.

He has no influence over other fauna, but can communicate with amphibians and reptiles and can weakly communicate with birds and crocodilians as well. Mammals are completely beyond his reach.

Physiology

Despite the lean appearance of his upper half, he is still quite strong and specializes in grabbing prey and dragging it into the water with a strong grip and the force of his entire mass.

Quincy's spine is somewhat mammalian in the upper half of his body, but the tail half is fully fish structure, so he swims in a slightly corkscrew motion rather than strictly up-down or side-to-side spinal motion.

Due to the nature of his eyes, he can see clearly underwater but struggles through distortion when looking through open air. As a result, while he taught himself to read, it gives him a massive headache. His eyes don't turn much, so he often has to swivel his whole head to get a good look at something.

His body is coated in a protective mucous to remain hydrated and reduce friction, but dries out easily in open air. He could technically lift himself up onto land for short periods of time, but the weight of his body, which is adapted to aquatic buoyancy, would slowly crush him like a beached cetacean.

Quincy can breathe both submerged (through his gills) and above water (through nose and mouth).

He is technically omnivorous but with a high meat dependency, and most plants that he benefits from are not easy to acquire from his habitat.

He has a low and somewhat gravely voice above water, but if anyone were ever afforded the luxury of hearing him underwater, they would learn his voice becomes rich and warm and soothing.

Personality

Quincy is very wordy, but speaks slowly with lots of space to think between words. Additionally, while his vocabulary is large, his pronunciation of many words is guesswork because he hasn't had many opportunities for correction.

He longs to read, but obstacles beyond simply acquiring books include being water-bound and struggling to focus his sight in open air.

It is easy to befriend him by both showing respect for him and his habitat and offering to read to him. Additionally, he values the presence of a conversational partner. Despite this, he's instinctively protective of his habitat and tends to turn trespassers into fish-food.

[ablackbrick]

Christmas in the Neritic Zone

Christmas in the Neritic Zone

“Macroalgae pneumatocysts” is the note from Yost that goes along with these two panels. Perhaps you know them as kelp bulbs. Yost did not intend them for the winter holidays but I think they make lovely Christmas cards. These panels appeared in the epilog to “The Ransom of Raymond Wolchene”, the story in which the Wolchene Foundry blew up and fell into the Pacific Ocean.

[seelevelsrise]

Day 253 — Neptune’s Necklace

Hormosira banksii, (also known as Neptune's necklace, Neptune's pearls, sea grapes, or bubbleweed) is a species of seaweed native to Australia and New Zealand. It is abundant on low-energy rocky reefs at midtide levels, where it outcompetes other algal species due to its high tolerance to desiccation. This is because it has a slimy layer that conserves moisture. This species is made up of strings of olive-brown, spherical, gas-filled pneumatocysts. The spheres rise to the surface of the water during high tide, obtaining more sunlight and moving with the flow of the current.

Seagrasses are an important part of many coastal systems, but are also under threat in many areas around the world as a result of habitat loss and reductions in water quality.

Meadow-forming seagrasses in Port Phillip Bay and Western Port are dominated by two species:

Long eelgrass: almost exclusively subtidal (always submerged regardless of the tides) and growing to a maximum depth of eight metres within Port Phillip Bay.

Short eelgrass: tends to occur in intertidal and very shallow subtidal habitats

The seagrasses around the bays are from the eelgrass species and they act as key ecosystem ‘engineers’ that:

stabilise sediments and improve water quality

reduce coastal erosion

provide nursery habitats and refuge for key fish species, and

support algae and invertebrates that provide food for other species.

When the stabilising roots of seagrass are lost, the result is increased turbidity and reduced water clarity. Increased turbidity then kills more seagrass and this process continues in a vicious cycle.

Photo: Seagrass meadow with Neptune’s necklace (Hormosira banksii), Point Gellibrand.

[oceanfront55]

above are plants found in an ocean biome. they consist of kelp, red algae, seagrass, and sargassum. 

kelp depends on moving water to provide a steady supply of nutrients for photosynthesis.

red algae absorbs blue light waves, which penetrates deeper than other light waves do, allows red algae to carry out photosynthesis. 

seagrass is resistant to erosion by waves and tidal currents and fleshy roots that anchor into the substrate. 

Pneumatocysts add buoyancy to the plant structure and allow it to float on the surface. 

[sciencespies]

Scientists develop an 'elevator' to generate kelp for biofuels 4x faster than normal

https://sciencespies.com/tech/scientists-develop-an-elevator-to-generate-kelp-for-biofuels-4x-faster-than-normal/

Scientists develop an 'elevator' to generate kelp for biofuels 4x faster than normal

In the struggle to slow the runaway freight train of humanity’s destructive impact on Earth, scientists are increasingly looking at the role our oceans can play.

Teaming up with industry, scientists from the University of Southern California have discovered a ‘kelp elevator’ technique that produces ample seaweed, potentially providing a high-yield biofuel to help wean us off fossil fuels.

Many land-based biofuels capable of powering cars, planes, ships, and trucks are currently sourced from mass-produced farm crops like corn, soybeans, and switchgrass. There are several problems with these options, including using up limited food-providing land space, guzzling massive amounts of water, pollution from pesticides and fertilizers, and encroaching on rare biodiverse habitats.

Not only does relying on giant marine algae like seaweed avoid these problems, but the biology of seaweed is also more suited to use as a biofuel.

Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) can grow at an impressive rate of up to 35 cm (14 inches) a day, in ideal conditions. They constantly form new fronds, allowing the harvesting of the mature fronds, which can reach 30 metres (98 feet) in length and would otherwise just deteriorate and die, without impacting the kelp’s growth.

As kelp is a protist, rather than a plant, its molecular composition lacks the sturdy plant lignin that complicates the process of converting land crops into fuel. Furthermore, growing kelp also captures carbon dioxide, which in turn elevates pH levels and oxygen supplies in the immediate areas – helping mitigate the local effects of ocean acidification.

But questions remain over whether we can farm enough seaweed to fuel our future in an environmentally friendly way. Now, researchers may have discovered a way to effectively mass produce kelp – by raising and lowering kelp’s depth in the water.

“We found that depth-cycled kelp grew much faster than the control group of kelp, producing four times the biomass production,”  University of Southern California environmental scientist Diane Young Kim said.

By cycling the depth of the kelp across a day, the team discovered it was taking nutrients from deeper in the water that were missing closer to the surface at night, fueling its extra growth, while still receiving enough access to sunlight in shallower depths during the day.

The team found the kelp exposed to greater depths experienced some physiological changes that made them better equipped to deal with the increased pressure. Their pneumatocysts – the air-filled structures that help kelp fronds float closer to the sun – became thicker and more filled with fluid.

The researchers built a kelp elevator off the coast of California out of fibreglass and stainless steel, with horizontal beams they could “plant” juvenile kelp on. The whole structure was cycled through the water column using an automated, solar-powered winch.

“The good news is the farm system can be assembled from off-the-shelf products without new technology,” explained one of the team, chief engineer of Marine BioEnergy Brian Wilcox. “Once implemented, depth-cycling farms could lead to a new way to produce affordable, carbon-neutral fuel year-round.”

This technique could open up to farming huge regions of nutrient-poor ocean where kelp wouldn’t usually grow, which would allow us to also protect vital carbon sinks of naturally occurring kelp forests while still making use of the brown algae.

The team urged further investigation in this area as much remains to work out before we can see if this idea really is as good as it sounds, including the costs and energy requirements involved in growing, transportation, and converting the kelp biomass into liquid fuels.

But other scientists, like Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist Scott Lindell, are also working on selectively breeding hardier and larger kelp species that would be even more suitable for use as a biofuel.

“In a hotter and drier world of the future,” Lindell said in 2019, “it will be hard to find a better resource for biofuels than farmed seaweeds that require no arable land, no fresh water, and no fossil-fuel-derived fertilizer in contrast to modern land crops.”

This research was published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

#Tech

[nathanlucas96-blog]

9 fun facts about our lovely socal kelp forest.... welcome to my happy place. 🥰 -It’s a type algae -Can grow up to 18” a day making it one of the fastest growing plants in the world. -Kelp likes cool water. So the best times to see it, are in the cooler water months of socal -Sea animals use it as a place of shelter from weather and predators, making it very lush with wildlife. -It doesn’t have roots, but uses “hold fasts” that act like roots, however, it doesn’t absorb nutrients. -Many species of kelp have pneumatocysts, which are gas-filled bladders that help keep the fronds afloat in the water. -It’s predators include: boats, storms, pollution and warm water -Kelp helps combat climate change by absorbing co2 from the environment. This makes the water less acidic, also making it a fantastic living environment for shell fish. -Kelp is actually farmed! Between 100,000 and 170,000 wet tons of kelp are harvested just from California waters each year for uses such as: shampoo, toothpastes, salad dressings, puddings, cakes, dairy products and frozen foods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #kelpforest #catalina #bluewaterphoto #underwaterphotography #apneaart #zeiss18mm #underwaterworld #natgeo #fii_freedive #nathan_lucas https://www.instagram.com/p/CD9Hy1DDPAN/?igshid=1thjx7odp48mq