Marine Critter Thursday – Giant Isopod

Take the humble woodlouse (or pillbug or  slater or whatever you want to call them), that common inhabitant of gardens and damp houses that is pretty inoffensive and rolls up into a ball when poked. Imagine scaling the little guy up to the size where it is about as long as your forearm, and you’ve pretty much got a giant isopod [...]

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Marine Critter Thursday – Dumbo Octopus

Many strange looking creatures inhabit the deeps of the world’s oceans. Take for example the Dumbo octopus.

The common name of the Dumbo octopus comes from the resemblance between the animal and Walt Disney’s flying elephant, with the pair of large fins on the octopus’ head looking like large ears. There are several different species, which were [...]

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Marine Critter Thursday – Barnacles

I was feeling slightly uninspired about what marine animal to post about today. Since I’ve just got back from Wales where I was teaching rocky shore ecology to undergrads, I thought I’d write a brief article on something a saw every day there – barnacles. You might take some convincing that barnacles are interesting, but they are [...]

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Marine Critter Thursday – Walrus

After a brief absence whilst I was away in Liverpool last week, Marine Critter Thursday returns in the unmistakable shape of the walrus. With its large pronounced tusks, whiskered snout and large bulk, the walrus must rank as one of the most recognisable marine creatures around.

The name walrus is thought to have several possible origins. The first is [...]

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Suspension of Activity…

I’m away in at a conference in Liverpool next week, which should be nice break from the normal grind. Unfortunately I’m not sure whether I’ll have much spare time, or even internet access, so activity here may be suspended for a while. I saw some cool pictures of jellyfish found during a survey of Arctic [...]

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Marine Critter Thursday – Marine Iguanas

A descripton of marine iguanas from the pen of Charles Darwin:
“The black Lava rocks on the beach are frequented by large (2-3 ft), disgusting clumsy Lizards. They are as black as the porous rocks over which they crawl & seek their prey from the Sea. I call them ‘imps of darkness’. They assuredly well become [...]

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Marine Critter Thursday – Ice Worm

At certain points on the ocean floor, the geological environment results in methane gas seeping through the sediment (I’m not a geologist, so I won’t be going into any detail about what causes methane seeps – for this post it is enough to known that do they occur). At some locations, the methane forms gas hydrates, [...]

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Marine Critter Thursday – Zombie Bone Eating Snot Worms

In order to tell the story of the Zombie Bone Eating Snot Worm (no, I didn’t just make that up), this post sadly has to start with a death. One of the magnificent leviathans of the seas, a whale, has sadly passed away. After a long and happy life, Moby the grey whale has finally [...]

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Glass Marine Creatures

This post was inspired by seeing a picture of a hermit crab in a glass shell on the blog Items of Interest. Seeing how a hermit crab fits into its borrowed shell is cool, but stylish glass shell put me in mind of one of my girlfriend’s photography books. This book covers an exhibition she once [...]

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Marine Critter Thursday – Basking Sharks

When you say the word ’shark’, most people get the image of the big oceanic predators like the Great White or Tiger Shark. Whilst these sort of sharks are absent from the waters around the UK (and I’m ignoring these news reports in that statement), there are actually around 30 different species of shark can be found off the coast [...]

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