Animals: Deep Sea Creatures

[Alex K.]

I want to give credit to one of the amazing artists who is doing this cutting edge photography. His name is Peter Batson and he has a fantastic site called www.exploretheabyss.com . What he is doing is showing us things which no humans have ever seen in all of history. some artists have powers to entertain and others have the power to open our minds to things we had no idea about. We at conceptart.org appreciate the work which the scientists and deep sea photographers are doing as it is they who are showing us things which we could previously only imagine.


Please credit artists and sources if you know who else has taken these images for us to see and share.


jason manley
www.conceptart.org




Just found this link on metafilter. The fish are wickedly surreal:

[Fozzybar]

This is great!

Thank you, Alex! :thumbsup:

[franticflame]

These creep the #@$% out of me. Not to mention I had a tuna sandwich for lunch. Oh dear. :eek:

GREAT references!!!

I recently found some interesting sea life at Jeff's Nudibranch Site

[Flip]

Very nice!
I had a look for more pictures of deep sea creatures and found that a lot of the photos seem to be from here:
http://www.oceans.gov.au/norfanz/CreatureFeature.htm
(check out the photo library as well as the creature features)

I also found a few other sites with some good references.
A few pics here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/abyss/life/bestiary.html
and here:
http://library.thinkquest.org/4106
Bioluminescence photos:
http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/organism/photo.html
From Monterey Bay:
http://www.mbari.org/data/images_video/animals.htm
Vampire Squid:
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smi...mpire_jpg.html

[Kasper_P]

I don't like the way theyr all looking at me...

Great stuff. Better get some creature started.

[Mr Man]

You seriously gotta checkout this www.fishbase.org
It has stuff about everyfish recorded (just about).
The database is Huge!!!!:eek:

[goran]

Alex K. -Than you very much man, this is great.

[Hunger_Artist]

I love deep sea fish.








not technically fish, but still pretty darn cool

[Muttonhead]

WHAT?!?!?! WTF are some of those things! I am flipping out!

Thanks a BUNCH for these. Me so happy.

[S.C. Watson]

...and they say we haven't found alien life yet...

[indiana]

These things are brilliant...All you Veggies -Think again !
Thanks for the great links.

[Denart]

this is how small they actually are! awwww...




look how the front tooth is going through the upper lip!








yum...


this is called the "Dumbo Octopus!" hehe





weird snail shell with horns n' all!

[MrFrost]

great references!!!

[N D Hill]

Here's my personal favorate, the giant squid (architeuthis dux). These things give me the creeps. Giant squid can reach sizes of up to sixty feet in length. Most of this length is made up of two 40 foot tenticles that it uses to sieze prey at a distance. They also have the largest eye in the animal kingdom as the eye can reach a diameter of up to 16 inches across. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photos of an intact eye so you'll have to take my word for it.

This thread is awesome. Proof that reality is stranger than fiction.













Giant Squid Larva







Colossal squid (mesonychoteuthis)


This is it's beak. Scientists believe this specimen is only a juvinille because beaks the size of footballs have been recovered in the stomachs of sperm whales.


A close-up of the clawed tenticles



The very first specimen recovered.

[egerie]

God's gift to concept artists. Wow. I think the most impressive one is the oar fish. Oh and that chimaera_pup.jpg is pretty neat. blown away...

[jester]

I usually like squid (life and on my plate) but seeing those last pics I get the impression that they'll soon strike back and humans fit in their prey scheme...



Great references!

Jester

[Fozzybar]

The creature on the first pix denart posted are called "cookie cutters"...it's a little shark species, which lurks in the dark of the deep sea for big fishes, just to dart off on the "prey" to bite off a chunk of flesh...the wound you can see on the victims looks like a cookie, that's why they are called "cookie cutter"...fishermen even found a goblin-shark with a complete hole in its tail fin...just like blanked out with a machine...

You can find many of this cookie-shaped marks in deep-sea cables...people didn't know for a long time why there were such marks in the cables...

[N D Hill]

Actually, I think those were some sort of hagfish or some other primative jawless fish. They look more suited for parasytic feeding or scavenging. Cookie-cutters have much more descernable jaws and have dogfish-like bodies.

[LaPalida]

Image Quest 3D link to deepwater photography

[N D Hill]

Another cool thing about a lot of deep sea animas as that they have the ability produce their own light through bioluminescence. They use specialized organs called photophores to generate light that can be used lure prey or to signal the opposite sex for mating. I remember watching an old national geographic special where scientists were saying how supprised they were to discover how important sight is at those extreme depths with severe low-light. Other fish species that live in different low-light conditions such as in caves have lost the ability of sight all together and either have no eyes or useless/atrophied eyes. Most deep sea animals have huge highly developed eyes which you can see in this thread.

Anyway, on with the pictures.

[rommel543]

The creature on the first pix denart posted are called "cookie cutters"...it's a little shark species, which lurks in the dark of the deep sea for big fishes, just to dart off on the "prey" to bite off a chunk of flesh...the wound you can see on the victims looks like a cookie, that's why they are called "cookie cutter"...fishermen even found a goblin-shark with a complete hole in its tail fin...just like blanked out with a machine...

You can find many of this cookie-shaped marks in deep-sea cables...people didn't know for a long time why there were such marks in the cables...

I'm in Manitoba Canada. We have a similar creature here. We call them Lamprey. They usually attach themselves to bottom feeders like suckers an Northern Pike (jackfish). Although they don't get quite that big

[tastiger]

Here's a site with amazing photography in a general sense, including these. Tasmania has had four giant squid carcasses wash ashore in recent years:



Found here

http://www.leatherwoodonline.com/tas...quid/index.htm

And this bizarre squid photograph, apparently self-triggered at a depth of 200 metres off Heard Island in the sub-Antarctic earlier this year.



Found here:

http://www.leatherwoodonline.com/ant...rd04/index.php

[insane visions]

these are just too fucking DOPEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! mannnnnnnnnnnnn.............ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhh....GASP!

[Jason Manley]

this thread is amazing. It has literally circulated around the internet..all over the world. I hope more pics keep coming in. What great inspiration for creature designs...yum!

If you are a visitor from another site, please feel free to join the forums and participate in art and discussion!

Welcome all!


Jason

[Fozzybar]

Seems that there is a need to inform about the deep sea...

Very few people know that the deep sea is a gigantic area where nearly everything is still to explore...

some facts to understand what amazing treasures of nature there can be found:

- 70% of our planets surface is covered by water...
- the average depth of the oceans is about 4000 meters (!)
- sunlight is going through down to 300 meters, beneath this border it's absolutely dark (only submersibles are able to get that deep...and there are very few of them at all...ridiculously few compared to the area)
- deep sea makes more than 50% of the habitat on earth

An oceanographer once said "with our methods we even wouldn't have found elephants on land"...

There is so MUCH to explore down there...don't be surprised if there will be really amazing creatures or anything else found in future...

link:
It's a german site, but very good for understanding the deep sea...there are also pictures of creatures and descriptions to them...

http://www.die-tiefsee.de

Enjoy!

[Hunger_Artist]

I hope these are new to some of you.. they were stored away in one of my bookmark folders..









more here: http://www.imagequest3d.com/catalogue/deepsea/


this thread is beyond awesome.. keep posting images!

[S.C. Watson]

Fantastic photos people - keep posting!

It's amazing how this is often the most popular thread on CA - check the who's online and usually there are more people in here than anywhere else

Cheers,
~Oreg.

[Forge]

ok, here is my contribution :

those ones are eggs ! :

[lovelinefan]

Possibly the greatest is the Vampire Squid from Hell Vampyroteuthis infernalis


(a behavior where the squid folds back its connected tentacles over its body, exposing the POINTED SPIKES (not suckers) that line their underside)

"William Beebe (1926) described V. infernalis as "a very small but terrible octopus, black as night with ivory white jaws and blood red eyes" "

[lovelinefan]

I'm in Manitoba Canada. We have a similar creature here. We call them Lamprey. They usually attach themselves to bottom feeders like suckers an Northern Pike (jackfish). Although they don't get quite that big

More random info...
Lampreys, Hagfish, and those "cookie cutter" sharks are all part of the group (or superphylum, but not really formally) agnatha, wich contains the jawless fish. Thats right sports fans, jawless. They only have teeth around an open mouth, that they can use to spear into a prey, and tear off chunks by writhing about. Lampreys also create copeous amounts of slime, which coats their bodies, allowing them to tie a knot with their bodies down by their tail, and wrigle it up to the mouth, using this to push the mouth away from the prey and therefore tear off a hunk. Crazy, huh?