The Marine Science Institute's monthly column, Science and the SeaTM, is an informative and entertaining article that explains many interesting features of the marine environment and the creatures that live there. Science and the SeaTM articles appear monthly in one of Texas' most widely read fishing magazines, Texas Saltwater Fishing, the Port Aransas South Jetty newspaper, the Flour Bluff News, and the Island Moon newspaper. Our article archive is available also on our website.
Sometimes we consider a species rare because it truly is, whether because it’s endangered or simply because it naturally has sparse populations. But other times, a species may only appear rare because it lives in such remote locations that people haven’t managed to find it very often. That seems to be the case with the world’s largest amphipod, Alicella gigantea. Amphipods include more than 10,700 shrimp-like crustaceans found throughout the sea and other aquatic environments.
Sound travels farther in water than it does in the air, and acoustics are an important aspect of daily life for marine creatures ranging from whales to coral. In addition to communication, many marine animals rely on sound for navigation, hunting, avoiding predators, and choosing ideal places to live. Baby oysters are among the many species that depend on sound cues in their environment to determine where best to settle down. But researchers in Australia have discovered a growing challenge for oysters: the interference of human-created noise in the ocean.
It’s been 100 years since people discovered the existence of the colossal squid, known by its scientific name Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, when a scientist found pieces of two huge squids in a sperm whale’s stomach. Although several (mostly dead) specimens have been collected since then—including one weighing over 1,000 pounds in 2007—scientists have never managed to film one of these creatures in its natural habitat. That changed this year when researchers captured video of a baby colossal squid near the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Have you ever heard of “mosquito ringtones”? They’re phone ringtones that teens can easily hear but the frequency is too high for adults to hear, since humans naturally start losing the ability to hear higher frequencies in their 20s. New research suggests that some whale species use a similar trick—for very different reasons. Instead of trying to hide the sound of a ringing phone from adults, some whales call at frequencies too low for predators to hear.
One of the most famous symbiotic relationships in the animal kingdom is the clownfish and its anemone. Symbiosis is the close association between two different species where at least one benefits from the arrangement. Scientists have long known the advantages clownfish and anemones offer one another, but one mystery has stumped them for a century: How do clownfish avoid getting stung by the nematocysts, or stinging cells, on an anemone’s tentacles, which it uses to catch its prey?
If you thought dating other humans was complicated, wait until you hear about the complex courtship behaviors of wild leopard seals. These apex predators are the second largest Antarctic seal species after southern elephant seals. At 8 to 11 feet long and weighing up to 1,300 pounds, their only natural predators are orcas. These ice-loving pinnipeds are notoriously difficult to study, but a team of researchers led by a Baylor University biologist managed to observe a two-hour courtship interaction between a male and female in Laguna San Rafael, Chile.
It’s harder to imagine a more hostile environment on Earth than the ocean’s hadal zone. Named after Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, the hadal zone is the deepest part of the ocean, located about 3.7 to 6.8 miles below sea level in marine trenches. Not only is it pitch black, but the organisms living there must withstand intense pressure, which also makes it challenging for researchers to explore. It’s no wonder that scientists know so little about the creatures that manage to survive in these conditions.
Take a moment to imagine what you think is the largest sea creature on Earth. How big is it? Are you thinking of the blue whale? At somewhere between 80 to 110 feet long, blue whales are about as long as an NBA basketball court, and, at 20 to 25 feet across, about half as wide as one.
When Pinocchio and his father, Geppetto, were swallowed by a whale, they started a fire to make the whale sneeze them out. That’s not exactly the strategy that juvenile Japanese eels use, but the eels have managed to find a way to escape the stomachs of predators that swallow them—and biologists have captured their Houdini-like feats on video.
Sea otters, dolphins, crows, elephants, octopuses, crocodiles—these animals, like humans, use tools for a variety of activities, from eating and drinking, to grooming and play, to combat and communication. But far fewer animals are known to manufacture and modify the tools, rather than simply using what they come across in their environment. And now, humpback whales are part of this much smaller group of “tool wielders.”
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