Underwater

“Alexander Safonov is a software architect from Voronezh, Russia who currently lives and works in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. Not content to sit in front of a computer full-time he obtained a diving license in 2002 and started to experiment with underwater photography about two years later. He has since made numerous excursions to photograph underwater wildlife off Cocos Island, Fiji, the Galapagos and Raja Ampat. However his favorite destination is the annual sardine run off the coast of South Africa where most of the photos you see were captured over the last few years.”

via

Underwater Experiments

“Russian biologist Alexander Semenov graduated in 2007 from Moscow State University’s zoology department where he studied invertebrate animals. Specifically: squid brains. Now he works as the chief of his diving team at the White Sea Biological Station, camera always in-hand, where he’s captured some of these extraordinary photographs of jellyfish and other wildlife.”

via

How Sperm Whales Sleep

Photo by Magnus Lundgren. Text by Matt Kaplan:

“A team led by Luke Rendell at the University of St Andrew’s, UK, were monitoring calls and behaviour in sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) off the northern Chile coast when they accidentally drifted into the middle of a pod of whales hanging vertically in the water, their noses poking out of the surface. At least two of the whales were facing the boat, but not a single animal responded.

“It was actually pretty scary. The boat had drifted into the group with its engine off [while] I was below decks making acoustic recordings,” says Rendell. “Once I saw the situation I decided the best thing to do was to try and sail our way out of the group rather than turn the engine on and have them all react.”

The researchers was almost successful, but unfortunately they nudged one of the whales on the way out. “We had no idea how they would react; each of the animals probably weighed up to twice as much as our boat, and could have sunk us. If they had decided to take action collectively — sperm whales do engage in communal defence [against] killer whales — then we could have been in real trouble,” Rendell says. Fortunately for everyone on board, after an initial jolt of activity the whales timidly moved away, and within fifteen minutes were bobbing peacefully at the surface again.”

Watch a video of the whales (credit Luke Rendell, University of St Andrews).

via Nature

 

Resourceful Fish

“Off the Izu Peninsula, a yellow goby peers through the window of its corroded soda-can home, evidence of the 127 million people just above the water’s surface.”

Photograph by Brian Skerry

via National Geographic

Vampire Squid

“The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis, lit. “vampire squid from Hell”) is a small, deep-sea cephalopod found throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world. Unique retractile sensory filaments justify the vampire squid’s placement in its own order: Vampyromorphida (formerly Vampyromorpha), which shares similarities with both squid and octopuses. As a phylogenetic relict it is the only known surviving member of its order, first described and originally classified as an octopus in 1903 by German teuthologist Carl Chun, but later assigned to a new order together with several extinct taxa. The animal’s dark color, cloak-like webbing, and red eyes are what gave the vampire squid its name.”

via Wikipedia and Google Images

Monstrum

Blue whale in Gothenburg, Sweden.

more amazing playgrounds here -> Monstrum

Avaritia

Jud Turner on his work:

“The name is taken from the Latin term for ‘greed’ and the bait this mechanized angler fish is using is a coin from 1799. Heightening my enjoyment of the subject (greed) it’s a commission for a German financier!”

Pretty impressive!

via Jud Turner

Luminescent Sea

“Glowing bioluminescent plankton in the tide line washes up onto a beach on Vaadhoo Island, Raa Atoll, Maldives, with stars above and a ship’s lights on the horizon.”

Picture: Doug Perrine / Barcroft Media

via