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.
11 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.
11 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...
11 years agoFeast your eyes on the incredible stages of an urchin's development as it moves from egg to adult.
10 years ago