I relate @beetlemoses.bsky.social, I relate

This, this is what I’m here for..🙌 For a little bit of intrigue and learnin’ 🪼🩵

There's something that feels a bit dead about the world right now, but tens of thousands of people just came together to help us solve a 100 year old mystery about a little blue jelly, and I find that heartbreakingly hopeful:

This kind of stuff makes the rest of the crap tolerable

Check out our latest preprint!

In our last thread, we left the jelly-enjoyers of Bluesky with a cliff hanger ending, in what one eager onlooker described as soap opera science 😜 ... wait no more, we are back! Grab your popcorn shrimp and come with us on a journey spanning more than... bsky.app/profile/iwan...

was randomly browsing r/megalophobia earlier only to see an image of stygiomedusa with a snorkeler at the surface, which is bonkers since it's a deep sea jelly. 🦑🧪 after a little digging, it came from this paper: doi.org/10.1590/S198... about this observation: www.instagram.com/p/BzlnDMxht0y

Let's do another #ctenophore survey. You are scuba divining and see this lobate comb jelly cruising in search of prey. Is it swimming to the LEFT or RIGHT? 🦑🧪🌊

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.

Ok folks, time to help with actual science while scrolling social media! Marine biologist Dr. Steve Haddock is conducting a study on public perception of this critter down below. He needs replies! Please go talk to Steve and re-skeet far and wide!

Yesssss!!! Our lab has a new paper out, and it comes with an awesome story:

Hey author friends! Please help! I do freelance writing, and I’m trying to find my DC pro and semi-pro writer friends. How do I find them? Are there Bluesky starter packs, meetup group, professional societies? How do writers find each other?

Happy Friday afternoon folks. Here be some leaf sheep wishing you a lovely day 🌊

CAN YOU GUESS THIS ONE?? 👀 (Thanks to @schmidtocean.bsky.social for letting me share their video!)

Many sea stars begin life as young fairy-like creature (called a brachiolaria) that float through the open ocean. Eventually, a small star forms within them (here in yellow). The fairy-like brachiolaria sinks under the star’s weight, and the star pops out! 🎥@the_story_of_a_biologist (on Insta)

With the rise of AI, social media as we know it is about to die. As a Very Online Person (*sigh*), I see this as part of a larger swing. In the last decade, for better and worse, commentators have gained popular trust. Now, all those random accounts are completely untrustworthy. What do we do? [1/n]

You can no longer believe what you see online. So, what happens next? What do you think?

Bet this will be the coolest, and weirdest, thing you read today :))

I want to tell you a story, and it begins with this VERY WEIRD animal: Meet Thetys vagina... [a thread 🧵] 📸 m_patton bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf 🌿🧪🦑🐙🌊

Hi all—I posted a thread earlier about a politician who shared what appeared to be an AI generated post attributed to me. Karl (below) suggested it may have been a misattribution. In an effort to always share correct info & be transparent, I’ve removed my post while I gather more info.

Meet the “squidworm” 🦑🪱 Discovered by WHOI biologist Larry Madin and colleagues, this 4-inch-long animal was just one of roughly 6,000 new species uncovered during the Census of Marine Life, a decade-long global effort involving more than 2,700 scientists to explore and document ocean life.

WOW

I just couldn't stop thinking about how weird sperm whale mouths are and yet how perfectly shaped for inserting giant squid into

#CephalopodFriday - mit einer Sensationsmeldung! Das erste Video, wie ein #Pottwal einen #Riesenkalmar #Architeuthys erbeutet. @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social teilte dies vor 2 Tagen (Thanks!!!). Ich habe auf Meertext etwas Info drumherum geschrieben scilogs.spektrum.de/meertext/cep...

OMG 😭 Huntington's is an inherited disease that's like Alzheimers + Parkinson's all in one. NOW: "once the gene therapy has been delivered into the brain... [it] injects a piece of DNA to reprogram the neuron to become a factory for its own cure." LIFE SAVING! www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhEx...

And thank you Dagomar for sharing it with me! You are the true whale-squid video whisperer

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

The UN is a bit like the foundation of an old house. Expensive to maintain and costly to repair but WOW you do not want to break it. So much of our modern world is held together by the invisible work of multilateral diplomacy. I shudder to think what the world would be like without it

Sea ice is fucking phenomenal (📸 by me over Greenland in 2023)

See what happens under extremely high pressure? What the video.

Me: *checks news* Me, 20 minutes later: *transforms into tiny crab, floats way on jellyfish*

“Who me? As a tripod fish, I deal with stress and fear by transforming into an eyeless abyssal predatory elder god. What about you?” 🎥 Huge thanks to @frida.yolotzin for letting me use the baby tripod fish video, and @schmidtocean for permission to share the adult video.

This is serious and also a delightful combination of words

There is always room for wonder.

A new study led by ETH Zurich fellow @aaffholder.bsky.social examines whether Titan's subsurface ocean could support life. His findings suggest that if life exists there, it may persist only in extremely small amounts, making detection a formidable challenge. 🧪 🔭 Learn more:

Feels like the world is burning so time for weird jellyfish facts 🧵

True of fisheries departments too. And let me tell you about parasitologists... xkcd.com/3140/

On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked, "If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?" Allow our scaled diagram to explain...

PSEUDOCOPULATION! Archaster angulatus a commonly encountered sand star in Australia- undergoes this "stacking" behavior to presumably enhance reproductive success-if memory serves its alternating genders. this is QUITE a stack! www.inaturalist.org/observations...

I have, despite my better judgment, returned to Instagram, where people are now violently arguing about exactly what fish species this is. This is the kind of anger I want to see on the internet 💙

i’m increasingly of the belief that as a sci-fi horror writer i don’t actually need to come up with any new ideas

The glass amphipod Cystisoma is transparent because in the open ocean there is nowhere to hide, and its round head is completely covered in giant eyes. So when you're swimming far from shore just remember: you can't see them, but they can see you. 📽️ Dr. Alejandro Damian-Serrano 🧪🌊🌿🦑🐙

There are more than 5,500 species of lizards, so we could've made this much longer.

This *Osedax* comic by @thefuzzyslug.bsky.social is just amazing! 🤩 #MarineLife #Invertebrate #SciArt 🦑🌊🐡

When you see AI slop that’s not labeled on social media (in places where you can’t flag for AI) what do you do? Ignore? Block? Report? Throw your phone into a grassland and allow decomposition to slowly eat at the fabric of technological advancement?

This feels like something @jarodkanderson.bsky.social would appreciate

Right now, delegates from around the world are debating how much the planet will respond to plastic pollution. To the delegates who are showing up for a strong treaty, who are standing up for nature, who are tired but still working for our planet and ocean: We see you. THANK YOU. #INC5 #plastics

Yesterday I discovered that ChatGPT's PhD-level expertise didn't extend to bird anatomy. This morning I thought, perhaps I was being too hard on the half-trillion-dollar company. Birds are a little weird, anatomically speaking. Let's try something more familiar. A mammal. Behold.

This simple science tool visualizes where plastic goes AND where it comes form: plasticadrift.org #PlasticsTreaty #INC5 delegates, you can use this to see where your high-seas plastic comes form. Terms like "accumulation zones" do not capture this movement. That's why we should not focus on them.

See where plastic ends up in the ocean - and likely in sea creatures and your sea food.