Mesmerizing Sea Life

Flamingo tongue is a marine gastropod mollusk that lives on the coral reefs in the Caribbean and the Tropical Western Atlantic. This miniature is very colorful with bright pink or orange coloration with black spots and can grow between 2 to 3 cm in size. Specialized in eating soft corals and is typically found on sea whips, sea fans, and sea plumes. They slowly crawl on the bodies of their prey and eat, leaving only the skeleton behind.  Gorgonian coral is a soft coral that contains a toxic chemical. While feeding on these corals, they do not suffer any harm. Instead, they incorporate this toxic material as a secondary chemical and become toxic themselves. As a result, the predator has a distasteful experience when they try to feed on these snails. These bright colors present on the Flamingo tongue serves as a warning to the predators, which is known as aposematism. Flamingo tongue reproduces through internal fertilization - where the female lays the eggs on the soft corals where s...

"Why it has to be a shark every time let it be a different predator Hmm, Let's go with an alligator" Maybe the director as thought like this, which gave life to an oversized alligator thriller "The Crawl" When a massive hurricane hits the Floride town. Haley, a young woman ignores the evacuation order and goes to search for his missing father, Dave. After finding his father in a severely injured condition, they both find themselves in front of a gigantic alligator. Making them trapped in the basement with rapidly approaching floodwaters filled with more of these aggressive predators. With storm strengthing they have to overcome their fear to save themselves. During the entire runtime, the movie lets us experience a stressful joy to watch with featuring some of the fantastic underwater sequences. This 2019 horror thriller has been directed by Alexandre Aja featuring Kaya Scodelario as Haley and Barry Pepper as Dave (Haley's Father). Here are some of the excit...

Squalene, natural oil that is being harvested from sharks is being used in the Covid-19 vaccine. This ingredient is used as an adjuvant in medicine which increases the effectiveness of a vaccine by increasing the immune response. In order to immunize everyone in the world with two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine containing squalene, would require around half a million sharks, a shark group said. Around 3,000 sharks are needed to extract one tonne of squalene. According to the Shark Allies, species targeted for being rich in squalene include the gulper shark and the basking shark, which are classed as vulnerable, meaning that their populations are decreasing and they could become endangered if the circumstances threatening them continue. The advocacy group has said that harvesting an endangered specie for a component in the medicine is not sustainable. “Harvesting something from a wild animal is never going to be sustainable, especially if it's a top predator that doesn't reproduc...

Some 92 to 66 million years ago, as the Age of Dinosaurs waned, giant marine lizards called mosasaurs roamed in the ocean that covered North America from Utah to Missouri and Texas to the Yukon. The air-breathing predators were streamlined swimmers that gorged almost everything in their path, including fish, turtles, clams, and even smaller mosasaurs. First, the mosasaur bones have been discovered near the Delta County town of Cedaredge in 1975,  by Coloradoan Gary Thompson which the teen reported to his high school science teacher. The specimens made their way to Utah's Brigham Young University, where, in 1999, the creature that left the fossils was named Prognathodon stadtmani. "I first learned of this discovery while doing background research for my Ph.D.," says newly arrived Utah State University Eastern paleontologist Joshua Lively, who recently took the control as curator of the Price campus Prehistoric Museum. "Ultimately, parts of this fossil, which were prep...

At sea level, the air that surrounds down presses down at 14.7 pounds per square inch. We don't feel it, because the body releases the same force pushed by the fluids in our body. Dive deep into the ocean, you will encounter a noticeable change. You can feel an increase in pressure at your eardrums. This is due to the increase in hydrostatic pressure, the pressure exerted by a fluid on an immersed object. The deeper you go, the increase the pressure pushes you down. For every 33 feet, you dive deep, there is a change in the atmosphere by 1 unit. The animals living deep, are experienced to live extreme pressure conditions. They have special features which help them to deal with these tough conditions. In the deepest part of the Atlantic, the pressure can reach up to 840 bars while the pressure at the challenger deep ( Mariana Trench ) can go up to 1000 bars or more.  Whales, deep dive to almost 2000 meters to capture the squid. They breathe air, but their lungs are collapsible, so t...

Mariana Trench, just known because it is the deepest part, or does it hold any deepest secrets. Or is it popular because only 3 humans have successfully reached the bottom of it? Diving to these deepest points is known as the "Challenger Deep". The first dive has been done in 1960 successfully by oceanographer Don Walsh reaching about 35814 ft. Over 50 years later, Canadian Explorer the famous writer and director "James Cameron" (popularly known for the films "Titanic" and "Avatar") took the first solo dive and reached the depth of 35787 ft.  Located in the Western Pacific Ocean about 200 kilometers east of the Mariana Islands. The Mariana trench Measures about 2550 km in length and 69 km in width. Why is it known as the deepest trench? One reason the Mariana trench is so deep is the result of the subduction zones. Where one part of the sea bed in this case the Pacific plate dives beneath the other, the Philippine plate. Though tectonic plates e...

Out of all the deep sea movies, this is my top favorite.  "How much do you like?"   "I can't say" But made me watch over 30 times in the past 2 years it has been released. Every time I watch the movie I just feel like the first time. What truly awesome in this movie is Jason Statham, who has performed most of the scenes in the open water. He was a member of the British Olympic team in Korea and remained in the national diving squad for ten years.  While coming to the movie storyline, when international deep-sea facility scientists exploring the Mariana trench have been attacked by some unknown massive creature. So, the research facility makes their way to Jonas (Jason Statham) to seek his help in saving the team members who were trapped at the bottom of the Pacific. What makes so interesting is that a 75 feet prehistoric shark thought to be extinct makes way to the surface. Jonas has to team up with the research facility and risk his own li...