Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Snailfish creep (swim) into view

They are called snailfish, and they almost deserve it. With hardly any more solid structure than an invertebrate (only the teeth and inner-ear bones are hard), these scavengers play an important roles in the deep biosphere.  They have to stay there: adjusting to the pressure means they have all-jelly bodies that fall apart at the surface unless captured at depth and brought up in a close container  (so the whole ecosystem in Meg is... yep, impossible. Only without it there's no story, so just wave the "needed fictional element"  wand and go on).  
These three new species add to our knowledge of this enigmatic and little-studied group.  Over 6,500m down, they go on their way, no more aware of the surface world than we are of alternate universes.  

No comments: