A little stomatopod (mantis shrimp) peers out of its hole, looking up at my dive light

An Octopus cyanea hidden in plain sight

A graceful shadow over the reef

A polychaete worm, soaring like an eastern dragon

A small frogfish, perfectly hidden amongst orange sponges.

The beauty of squid against the waves

The parasitic nudibranch Gymnodoris nigricolor, which attaches itself to the fins of gobies.

"work"

This beast of a barracuda lurking in the shade of an overhang

An incredible and strange heteropod (sea elephant) gets a little tangled in its own tail. The fin on its belly is the 'foot' of this pelagic snail. Also featuring a small cameo appearance from a juvenile stomatopod (mantis shrimp) at about 0:52

My girlfriend started reading Children of Strife by @aptshadow.bsky.social . I've tried avoiding spoilers but I picked up that it's about stomatopods (mantis shrimp)! Anyway here's maybe my favourite video of peacock mantis which I shot a few years ago. An amazing creature. Music is from Half-Life

I love filming squid against breaking waves and churning water

A shy little bluering octopus.

An Octopus cyanea reveals itself and launches itself away

Speaking of early flight reminds me of a 1913 short story that could not have been conceived of now: Horror of the Heights by A. Conan Doyle. It treats high altitude as a mysterious realm, an ecosystem filled with creatures too transparent and too far up for us to have known of... 1/2

A large Ascarosepion latimanus (broadclub cuttlefish) hanging out at a coral farm as a bunch of oblivious divers pass by #marinelife

Octopus romance! A male Octopus cyanea braves harassment from damselfish to approach a female. #marinelife

A large broadclub cuttlefish, Ascarosepion latimanus, lurking in the remains of a coral farm (mostly wiped out in the heatwave in 2024). You might catch a glimpse of its companion in the distance.

An Octopus cyanea harrassed by territorial damselfish. The octopus is a male who has his eye on a female off screen. He is unwilling to back away but a little hesitant to approach (partially due to looming humans nearby). The damselfish are not happy with an octopus being indecisive on their rock

A sea snake with old skin overgrown with algae, looking like some ancient dragon

I asked to join the #marinelife group and I keep forgetting to share there!

Sea snakes can be very curious about people, and sometimes you pick up an unscheduled dive buddy for half the dive

Silhouetted pteropod flapping against the distant sky

Trump's whole strategy with Iran was to break the "rules" and kill their leaders. He assumed that would scare everyone else into submission. Instead Iran said, "No rules? OK, then we'll close the Strait and fling missiles at every oil facility within 2400 miles. How many Patriots you got left?"

I think it's bad for the President to threaten to annihilate an entire culture and i do not think you are being alarmist if you take his threats seriously and literally.

Squid Universe #art #illustration #sciart #イラスト #アート #marinelife #watercolor

A Phronima, pelagic amphipod. Living in the carcass of a carved-out salp with her babies

An incredible pelagic juvenile shrimp of some kind. It kept its very long rostrum (the pointy bit on its face) aimed at me at all times

Please remember when you swim in the ocean: 200 meters below you, there is a layer of fish that stretches all around the world. It is so dense, that when it was discovered during WWII it scared the navy so bad they bombed it. This is the ocean's thin inner shell of fish [🧵]

#addOcean Can I be added to the marine life feed?

A beautiful little pteropod (sea butterfly)

Little vignettes in the reef made by topography and sunlight

Rescue helicopter taking off. My phone's frame rate makes the rotors look like they are spinning much more slowly than they really are

The shell of this sea butterfly (pteropod Diacria) has become a substrate for what appears to be a parasitic hydroid colony. The bright color of the hydroids make me wonder if it's trying to get the pteropod to get eaten... could that be part of its life cycle?

Beautiful smallish eagle ray. Slowed down to apparently check me out before continuing on its way

A mysterious planktonic creature, maybe 3-4cm long. I'm not sure what to make of it. I think it might be a cnidarian, but its five-appendaged mouth makes me wonder if it could be some larval echinoderm.

My colleagues were surprised by how huge it was. Although the biggest one was less than 10mm long, its relative found in shallow water reef squids, which they had described last year (Zoral 2025) are only about 1mm long. An example of deep sea gigantism at a grand length of 7mm-ish, perhaps?

Something a little ... exotic. A parasitic cestode (tapeworm) from inside a deep sea squid (probably a chiroteuthid), from 450m down. Watch it blindly grasping with its four bristly appendages that shoot out of its head. Probably a new species that will be described by colleagues.

Squid under the rain

A beautiful scyphozoan (true jelly). For whatever reason, it's relatively uncommon for us to see true jellies in Okinawa. Something about this is telling my brain that it is lemon-flavored (it is not)

This curious worm uprooted itself from the sand like a carrot being pulled up by an invisible person, and rolled around in the current for a bit before starting to dig itself back in. You can see the sand grains slowly traveling over some mucous layer as it slowly reverses into the sand.

Framed in green

Moss-covered foxes of Inari shrine, Kyoto

Lichen and ume (plum flowers), Kyoto

A translucent nudibranch, a nomad of the sandy dunes

Let's go

The SAVE act is one of the most cunning attempts at voter suppression I have ever seen. They know women are less likely to vote for the GOP, and they found a way to make most married women have to pay to vote.

Underwater snowfall. A bloom of what I think are radiolarians

Pygmy seahorses, blending into their world