Haunting the deep sea for 300 million years Ghost sharks – also known as chimaeras or ratfish – are distant cousins of sharks and rays, separated by a whopping 300 million years. Creatures more ancient than dinosaurs, they glide through the darkness of the deep sea...
When burying your head in the sand brings results The giant stargazer, Kathetostoma giganteum, is another fantastic critter we met during our deep-sea surveys. With its ridiculously wide, flattened head, massive pectoral fins and disproportionately small tail, it...
New homeowners or salp murderers? Barrel shrimps are a regular in our midwater tows. All barrel shrimp species are part of the genus Phromina, and they are hard-core homebuilders. A female grabs a salp (a barrel-shaped jellylike plankton) and gobbles up the inside,...
If a shark was crossed with a hedgehog This beauty of a critter is the prickly dogfish. A small deep-sea shark endemic to the continental shelves of New Zealand and Australia, it lives in the ocean’s Twilight Zone – a permanent dusk 200-1000m below the surface....
Speedy Little Lanternfishes, Hunted by All First off, the tiny stars of the show: myctophids. These are little open-ocean fishes, about the size of a house key. They have silvery scales and light organs called photophores dotted along their bodies, and they move in...
