Dumbo octopus displays a peculiar posture
Invertebrate zoologist Mike Vecchione was stumped when a 'Dumbo' octopus spotted in the Gulf of Mexico displayed some never before seen behavior.
8 years agoEarth Touch is built on a simple philosophy: nature's stories shoul... View more from this contributor
While exploring deep-sea mud volcanoes near Trinidad and Tobago, researchers aboard the vessel Nautilus made an unexpected discovery: a methane bubble seep surrounded by an unbelievably huge field of mussels.
The mussel multitudes lie near a subduction boundary (where one plate of the earth's crust slides under another), a common location for mud volcanoes. As the rocky sediment gets compressed, the liquids trapped inside it erupt (much like lava)! As you can imagine, a methane-saturated mud volcano is no easy place to live ... Unlike those you would find on the beach, hardcore deep-sea mussels rely on special bacteria to produce energy from the gasses released by the seeps.
1 1 Massive deep-sea mussel bedInvertebrate zoologist Mike Vecchione was stumped when a 'Dumbo' octopus spotted in the Gulf of Mexico displayed some never before seen behavior.
8 years agoMarine biologist (in training) Sarah Keartes goes behind the scenes at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to feast her eyes on some...
9 years agoFeast your eyes on the incredible stages of an urchin's development as it moves from egg to adult.
8 years ago