Thanks to those of you brave enough to vote. :^) Still time to sway the results with your own thoughts on #ctenophore anatomy. 🦑🧪

For CTENOPHORE DAY, a little survey: Which end of this fishing Pleurobrachia is the mouth on? Please just "vote" in the comments — no definitive answers. 🦑🧪🌊 P.S. this is one of my earliest #ctenophore photos, shot on film in a home-built kreisel. P.P.S. Legit data-gathering for a future paper.

Not to hijack this thread, but our book The Radiant Sea includes 35 pages of fluorescent animals (and humans.. and asparagus). Here is a young strawberry squid showing green fluorescence in the eyes and red fluorescent caps on its photophores. 🦑🧪🌊

@sonkejo.bsky.social and I were interviewed by @mdlaplante.bsky.social for his UnDisciplined podcast www.upr.org/podcasts/103... I don’t like hearing myself speak so I haven’t listened back, but my mom “LOVED IT”, so that counts for something. 😉 Support public radio, Utah PR, and @npr.org 🦑🧪🌊

It is great to see Mackenzie Gerringer's taxonomic work, describing a fish we collected from 3800 meters, featured in the @nytimes.com. We tried to spin this story to combat the blobfish's "ugliest creature" reputation, to get people excited by deep-sea exploration, not turned away. 🧪🦑

My first sighting of The Radiant Sea in the wild, at our local bookshop. If you have any “encounters” I would love to see them. 🙃 #booksky

Thanks to your incredible support, THE RADIANT SEA is already the top-selling new release in... Entomology? There are going to be some disappointed bug-huggers out there (looking at you @franzanth.bsky.social). 😉 I am hopeful they will warm up to pictures of ocean bugs like Cystisoma.

BTW I updated the Bioluminescence and Biooptics starter pack with a couple new faces. Let me know if you should be included..! go.bsky.app/9wFuWB9

I hope to take a PhD student in 2026 to study siphonophores. Please reach out if you are interested in applying this fall. For examples of recent lab projects see www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... and academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

Our science photo book The Radiant Sea is out Sept 2nd!! 30 years of research, 10 years of "we should", and a year of collating pix and writing. Sönke and I show (mostly for the first time) images of how organisms produce, use, and interact with light in the sea. #bioluminescence #fluorescence 🦑🧪🌊

Ctenophores possess a unique aboral organ that acts as a multisensory center, controlling complex behaviors. We’ve now created a ctenophore model integrated with our 3D volume EM data. Puts it into perspective. Check out our recent work here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #ctenophores #volumeEM

www.ucc.ie/en/bees/rese... Calling all those interested in #jellyfish - preliminary information about the 8th International Jellyfish Blooms Symposium being held in Cork in 2026 is available. Follow the link.

Come out and say Hi at MBARI’s open house Saturday the 12th from noon to 5. This is the one day a year that we are open to the public. We will have a biooptics and plankton booth set up!

Wish I could be at #Evol2025 this year! I’ll be starting a new lab at NYU this fall, and will be recruiting at all levels. Please spread the word if you know anyone who wants to work on evo. genomics, phylogenies, and comparative development of inverts (like Hawaiian Drosophila!) shchurch.github.io

Excited to share our study on sailing siphonophores, AKA bluebottles or man-o'-war! 🌊 we received hundreds of samples from scientists around the world, part of a huge effort to sequence genomes and test for multiple species 🧬 out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... 🦑🧪📌

My favorite outcome was validating species descriptions from 18th century scientists who illustrated animals on their voyages. Their descriptions were often rejected as implausible – we found that in many cases they were exactly right. Yet another reason why @biodivlibrary.bsky.social is so valuable

I am used to photographing #ctenophores in darkfield, but under those conditions it is hard to see the pigment spots on this little (5mm) specimen. Fun to see the patterns that show up when viewed against a white background. 🧪🦑🌊

This was unexpected..! I snuck a copy of The Cartoonist Club by @scottmccloud.bsky.social into our kid’s reading pile. He’s always saying “I can’t draw,. I’m not creative.” Well, this morning at school I saw this poster and said “Hey look”. He said “Yeah, me and Ollie are starting that” (!)

A wonderful read about the career trajectory of an inspiring #cnidarian researcher.

ICB blog Diving into Discovery: A #Researcher’s Journey in Marine #Biology, #Regeneration and #Evolution - Christine Schnitzler By Lisa Mesrop, SICB Mangum recipient, #scientist/blogger, UCSB (Oakley lab) integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2025/04/22/d... #science #fluorescence

It’s hard to beat field work in Hawaii with @cadurkin.bsky.social @lenaunderwater.bsky.social and others of the @mbarinews.bsky.social team..! We are using blue-water scuba diving to study #ctenophores, siphonophores, radiolarians, and #bioluminescence. 🦑🌊🧪🤿

Added Nathan Shaner to the Bioluminescence and Bio-optics starter pack. If you do relevant research, let me know and I can add you too..! go.bsky.app/9wFuWB9

It's a challenging time to be looking for a science job. How about a fully funded postdoc, in an exciting field, working with a pioneer in the field of biooptics?? 🧪

Thanks to the World Register of Marine Species for including our Mystery Mollusc nudibranch among their top species of the year! :^) This means a lot, since WoRMS is such an important and authoritative resource for marine scientists. 🦑🧪

In the Public Interest: After Moss Landing fire, state tightens battery storage regulations buff.ly/kD4AkSp via Christopher Neely

Trying to stay clear of the black void by focusing on amazing animals, but it is becoming more and more challenging to keep out of it. This article really hits some key points. 🧪 h/t to my secret correspondent 🕵️‍♀️ 🤐 skywriter.blue/pages/did:pl...

A fun case of usual-unusual: Most luminescence in the sea is blue-green, but Tomopteris worms emit yellow light. With Warren Francis, we found a species that emits blue light — unusual but usual. 🦑🧪 link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00227-016-3028-2 doi.org/10.1002/bio.2671

Honestly speechless about how thorough and creative this typeface design was. Variable widths and weights, serif, sans, italic, optional monospaced numbers, a volume knob for embellishments, smart swashes… 😮 Read through the linked article for details.

"Opening the ocean frontier will neither halt nor reduce terrestrial mining for nickel and cobalt. Extraction will continue on land, with associated biodiversity loss" Important & timely article on #deepseamining 🪸 ⛏️ www.nature.com/articles/s44... #MarineLife 🦑 #CriticalMinerals 🪫

Pausing to adjust my mask during last year's blue-water expedition off Hawaii. 😉 Photo by Natalia Llopis. 🌊🧪🦑

Today I would like to do a thread about 'counterforms.' They are a critical building block of typeface design... but what are they? How do they work? I'll also talk about how I thought of the counterforms in Really Sans.

If you want to read more about the #jellyfish -hugging deep-sea #octopus, here is the original paper: 🧪🌊🦑 www.nature.com/articles/sre...

One fun thing about working on #ctenophores (comb jellies) is that you get to see animals nobody has depicted for more than a century. I haven't found any images of Deiopea from the time between Chun's 1880 drawing and my 1990s photo. Even shallow SCUBA exploration can yield surprises 🌊🦑🧪

It's tempting to think that simpler letterforms = more legibility. But in my experience, that's not true. Typefaces are design systems too, and they need a certain level of complexity to work well. Here's why: (thread) 🧵

@ferrisjabr.bsky.social Spotted at Cal Academy. 👀

With all the real headlines these days, I'm finding it challenging to have @nytpitchbot.bsky.social and @theonion.com in my Bsky feed. I'm constantly doing double takes. 😵‍💫

Sometimes one must seek the light beyond their line of sight to see clearly . . . Fun times on the Central Coast. . .

Application reviews for a postdoc in my lab will begin next week. Two years of funding to conduct EvoDevo research using cnidarians.

We did a scuba dive today to swap out an instrument on one of our offshore moorings. While clearing off the biofouling, we got biofouled, hood to flipper, by caprellid amphipods (aka headbangers). Here’s my leg after moderate scraping… 🦑🧪🌊

Even on a dive boat, sometimes the most spectacular displays are above water. This was from when @caseywdunn.bsky.social and I were on a small liveaboard off Komodo, Indonesia. I like the offset paths of the double-flash on the right.

Does anyone else feel like #bluesky could easily fix the notification logic? It says “Person X and 10 others followed you” then later says “Person Y and 13 others followed you” but person X is third on that list. We don’t need the overlap. This must be so noisy for really popular accounts. 🦋

Try our new in silico PCR (sPCR) tool sharkmer- github.com/caseywdunn/s.... You give it primers and fastq reads, it gives you sequences that would be amplified by PCR. Works in minutes on a laptop for high copy regions like rRNA, great for species id etc. Feedback welcome. #bioinformatics #ngs

Excited about this new video that explains our research on how comb jelly membranes function under extreme pressure of the deep-sea. Made by 1st author Jacob Winnikoff & Kyra Schlining for @mbarinews.bsky.social 🦑🧪🌊 Just in time for @dsbsoc.bsky.social! #ctenophore www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7A0...

Please share! I am hiring a postdoc in Evolutionary Development to join our lab 🧪 🥼 🧬 recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF01855 initial reviews begin Jan 31st (to be adjusted in the ad)

I’m going to nominate @alexwild.bsky.social to perpetuate the #hexapodecember chain with a post…

I’m reposting the Bioluminescence and Biooptics starter kit after adding @kypodseyepods.bsky.social and a few new people. Let me know if you do work in these fields so I can add you to the list. go.bsky.app/9wFuWB9

In this #fluorescence picture of a Hercules beetle from Panama, you can see a black spot where the pseudopupil is located, as explained to me by Eric Warrant. #crustmas #hexapodecember

🪼Jellies are back🪼! Happy to announce that our exhibition #JellyfishUnveiled has been extended until January 26th. The exhibit is a joint effort between the Manet Team at @UiB and @msarscentre.bsky.social. Come and join us at the stunning Natural History Museum in Bergen. @Artsdatabanken

Amazing news - the exhibition 'Jellyfish unveiled' is extended until January 26 at the University Museum of Bergen! Discover the secrets of jellyfish and their kin through the eyes of @joanjsoto.bsky.social, @alexandrejan.bsky.social & Anne Aasjord 📸🌊🧪 Find out more: tinyurl.com/3c2yjj2f

Each summer, I spend the best week on Catalina Island for the Storymakers Fellowship. The purpose is to catalyze bold new projects. Our 3 years of amazing alumni stagger me. Some of them are here - go.bsky.app/3qTgNJm Application is open!! Deadline is Jan 15. dornsife.usc.edu/wrigley/enga...