A new paper just dropped a little while ago describing a new family for a common species of benthic ctenophore (comb jellies), Coeloplana meteoris, now known as Benthoplana meteoris. www.jse.ac.cn/EN/10.1111/j...

@behrenskristen.bsky.social told me about the theme today being Opah!!!! It's one of my favorite marine fish cause theyre kinda weird. Drawing I did for FAO a few years ago. #SundayFishSketch

Starting to fill in blocks of color and working on rendering some bull kelp for a project. #sciart

Happy Ctenophore day! Its a perfect day to celebrate such a small yet beautifully diverse phyla that comes in a wide array of shapes and colors. #Ctenophoreday

Day 30 - Dream. The final day of #sciartseptember. My long-term dream has always been to create a series of illustrated guides that would help identify the various jellies and jellyfish of the would. Creating illustrations like the ones below to accurately ID species.

Day 29 - Foresight. Elasmobranchs (including sharks, rays, and skates) includes species that can either give live birth or lay beautiful egg cases of varying shapes. Depositing them in secluded locations so the foreseeable next generation hatches safely. #sciartseptember

Day 28 - Harvest. Numerous species of algae are vital in numerous aspects of aquaculture, especially species like Nannochloropsis which is harvested as live feed for other species #sciartseptember. A comissioned color pencil drawing for a previous client.

Day 27 - Bounded #sciartseptember. In the deep sea a pair of shrimp will begin living in glass sponges and remain trapped inside the sponge once they get larger, the shrimp will be bound to the sponge for the rest of their lives.

Day 26 Forage - #sciartseptember Leaf cutter ants can travel up to 100m (330ft) from their nest to collect or forage for leaves or other materials. (ignoring the people part)

Day 25 - Tireless #sciartseptember. A quick sketch based a little bit on this upcoming year. With my defense approaching next Spring/Summer the long nights into my research are definitely piling up.

Day-24 Numbered. #sciartseptember. Through the effort of museums around the world, our natural world is collected, given a specific number, and safely stored in their collections. Here they are often guarded for future generations to study and unveil their secrets.

Day 23-Scouting #sciartseptember. Often field work takes a lot of research, trial & error, planning, and even scouting out locations. Its a lot of hard work but with enough luck it can often pay off.

Day 22, Fellowship. A sketch from the work I did during my last fellowship which redescribed a deep sea benthic ctenophore Tjalfiella. Unlike other benthic comb jellies, Tjalfiella has three openings to its gut, a primary mouth and 2 secondary mouths on its "arms." #sciartseptember

Day 21, Reef #sciartseptember. A single crown of thorns seastar is capable of eating 10 square meters of coral a year or its own body size worth each night.

Very quick 10 minute sketch for day 20 glacial #sciartseptember. Ice cores collected from glaciers is one way researchers are able to study our planets past. Some ice cores have samples that go as far back as 5 million years.

Day 19 - Depths. blood belly comb jelly (Ctenophora), helmet jellyfish (Cnidaria). Animals in the deep sea are some of the most beautiful, particularly the jellies with bodies like abstract portraits that move ethereally in the abyss. Here are two drawings of jellies you can find in the deep sea.

Day 18, Cenote for #sciartseptember. Not exactly a cenote, but blue holes are large marine sinkholes, with one of the largest being the Great Blue Hole in Belize. This is an old drawing I made of one back in 2019.

Day 17, Trawl. Although numerous advancements have greatly diminished the amount of bycatch in trawls around the world, still hundreds of thoudands of cetaceans are still unintentially caught. #sciartseptember

Day 16: Rift #sciartseptember . Deep in the sea numerous species often call the numerous submarine canyons as home including the curious and adorable rattails

Catching up on some prompts for #sciartseptember Day 15, Spawning. Typically 7-10 days after the full moon numerous coral species (particularly around the GBR) will spawn and release thousands of eggs at night

Day 14: Mimic of #sciartseptember. Cant resist doing a quick sketch of one of my favorite marine critters the Mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) who is well known for changing its body shape and texture to mimic a variety of wildlife including lionfish, flounder, and sea snakes.

#sciartseptember prompt wandering. Here we have the Arctic tern will migrate twice ayear from the Arctic to the Antarctic and cross over 44,000 to 59,000 miles (70,000 to 95,000 kilometers), traveling over a million miles over its lifetime.

A double feature for today's #sciartseptember prompt venomous, cause I can't decide. We have two old drawings of mine featuring the box jellies chironex fleckeri and alatina alata...some of the most venomous yet beautiful animals in the world

the Tawny Frogmouth for the #sciartseptember prompt Tawny. Always super interested in animals that can mimic their environment to some capacity.

For today's ##sciartseptember 's prompt vanishing. We have a very quick sketch dedicated to our dear friend the vaquita, with only 8 to 13 indiv est left in the wild population. This beautiful species is unfortunately vanishing.

Got a little busy today with work, so a little bit of a cheat, but for #sciartseptember prompt niche we have the various animals that call the hydrothermal vents there home, each filling a paticular niche.

Day 7 of #sciartseptember Boreal. So why not some mushrooms native to around the boreal forests of North America

#sciartseptember Day 5: corridor. Some could say anyhills are full of tunnel like corridors.

Quick little watercolor before dinner for "riverbank" #SciArtSeptember

A little late but here's a quick pen/ink drawing of a jewel beetle for the prompt "Jewel" in #sciartseptember.