Elusive Glass Octopus Spotted In the Remote Pacific Ocean (livescience.com) 12
Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shared some fascinating photos and a report from Live Science.
"This rarely seen glass octopus bared all recently — even a view of its innards — when an underwater robot filmed it gracefully soaring through the deep waters of the Central Pacific Ocean." Like other "glass" creatures, such as glass frogs and certain comb jellies, glass octopuses are almost completely transparent, with only their cylindrical eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract appearing opaque. The expedition crew reported two encounters with the glass octopus — an impressive count given that previously there was such limited footage of these clear cephalopods, scientists had to learn about them by studying chunks of them in the gut contents of their predators...
During the expedition, which ended July 8, a crew of marine scientists discovered a handful of what are likely newfound marine animals on nine previously unexplored submarine mountains known as seamounts. The team also completed high-resolution seafloor mapping of more than 11,500 square miles (30,000 square km) around the archipelago and video recordings of five additional seamounts filmed by the underwater robot SuBastian, according to a statement. SuBastian also snagged footage of a whale shark (the largest living fish in the world) and a long-legged crab stealing a fish from another crab.
The expedition sent SuBastian on 21 dives, enabling the robot to record more than 182 hours on the seafloor.
The expedition was run by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, a nonprofit operating foundation co-founded by Wendy and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google.
"This rarely seen glass octopus bared all recently — even a view of its innards — when an underwater robot filmed it gracefully soaring through the deep waters of the Central Pacific Ocean." Like other "glass" creatures, such as glass frogs and certain comb jellies, glass octopuses are almost completely transparent, with only their cylindrical eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract appearing opaque. The expedition crew reported two encounters with the glass octopus — an impressive count given that previously there was such limited footage of these clear cephalopods, scientists had to learn about them by studying chunks of them in the gut contents of their predators...
During the expedition, which ended July 8, a crew of marine scientists discovered a handful of what are likely newfound marine animals on nine previously unexplored submarine mountains known as seamounts. The team also completed high-resolution seafloor mapping of more than 11,500 square miles (30,000 square km) around the archipelago and video recordings of five additional seamounts filmed by the underwater robot SuBastian, according to a statement. SuBastian also snagged footage of a whale shark (the largest living fish in the world) and a long-legged crab stealing a fish from another crab.
The expedition sent SuBastian on 21 dives, enabling the robot to record more than 182 hours on the seafloor.
The expedition was run by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, a nonprofit operating foundation co-founded by Wendy and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google.
Glass Octopus? (Score:2)
42? No, the answer is infinite code forks! (Score:2)
The point of that FP was? You like movies?
Not sure why, but the story triggered a weird idea. Evolution is like DNA code forks. No merges allowed, but at some point there was a fork leading to a transparent octopus. What's next?
Enjoy the show, folks.
(But maybe that's the answer to the Fermi Paradox? When people get too smart and start trying to force merges, it soon goes far south? Geologic time is fundamentally incompatible with intelligence?)
Brain (Score:2)
Re:Brain (Score:5, Informative)
It is the eye. If eye is transparent, it doesn't catch light and it can't see.
From the linked article (Score:2)
... scientists had to learn about them by studying chunks of them in the gut contents of their predators.
For a moment I thought they were talking about acquisition targets of AT&T and Verizon.
Glass Octopus's Garden (Score:3)
John Lennon wanted to write a song about this species, but Octopus had too many syllables for the tune in his head so he went with onion.
Ringo was fascinated with the coral and other things on the seabed so he wrote a song about the (glass) Octopus's Garden.
Wow (Score:2)
That thing is beautiful.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
It is, but it's worth noting as majestic as this octopus is that transparency like this is not uncommon in the ocean. Many many species of creature start their lives out transparent in the ocean; even many octopus that later turn out to be non-transparent. Even many baby moray eels start out transparent.
If you like that octopus look up Black Water Photography:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
It's the practice of just taking underwater photographs in dark open water in the middle of the night of typically juvenile stuff like this using macro photography; because the ocean is absolutely full of this absolutely majestical stuff at night. If anyone ever decides to do it though my one piece of advice is even if you don't normally when you dive, wear a hood - there's nothing more creepy than feeling this shit crawling all over your head and feeling like it's gone into your ears at times - especially the creepy water millipede like shit that looks like it runs through water with hundreds of legs, stuff of nightmares!
It really is an alien world in the ocean; there's life there that makes things imagined in sci-fi look utterly tame and unimaginative in comparison.
No wonder Eric Schmidt funded this (Score:2)
But beautiful pictures, nonetheless.
Invisible Titanian Fighting Fish (Score:2)
When I was a kid a curiosity shop in Katoomba proudly displayed a murky tank in the window containing invisible titanian fighting fish, the larger being the female.
However, even after careful observation I never saw them.
SuBastion (Score:2)
Launched from the Falkor. Somebody's a Never ending Story fan.