Alehkhs posted:

Or having one want to play games with your super-expensive ROV...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWNP4Nb9WfM

Jut posted:

Marine Biology graduate here...I'll try answer stuff when I have the time

For now though here's some squid related dissection goodness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHEc-VbPAk
Check out those tentacles.

Alehkhs posted:

Or having one want to play games with your super-expensive ROV...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWNP4Nb9WfM

WendigoJohnson posted:

Seriously whales popping out of freaking nowhere is a fear of mine.

The Slippery Nipple posted:

I love this show, so loving awesome.

Hes the Great White and some of the Sperm whale episodes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNOaX7lnOu8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKFqI_ymAPI

WendigoJohnson posted:

Yeah me too. I got the same feeling when doing the Deep Sea areas of Endless Ocean(especialy the arctic levels with the orcas). Seriously whales popping out of freaking nowhere is a fear of mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3slSUSr-iI
The entire game is literally that.

Alehkhs posted:

Or having one want to play games with your super-expensive ROV...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWNP4Nb9WfM

Gormless Gormster posted:

Am I a monster if my first reaction to a majestic and extremely rare creature is hunger?

Fighting Falken posted:

I can get why some people would find videos like this unnerving, but I think it's neat seeing things like this. The giant 'monster' just wanted to see what was up, nothing too bad besides being surprised, right?

WendigoJohnson posted:

Yeah me too. I got the same feeling when doing the Deep Sea areas of Endless Ocean(especialy the arctic levels with the orcas). Seriously whales popping out of freaking nowhere is a fear of mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3slSUSr-iI
The entire game is literally that.

Fighting Falken posted:

I can get why some people would find videos like this unnerving, but I think it's neat seeing things like this. The giant 'monster' just wanted to see what was up, nothing too bad besides being surprised, right?

Alehkhs posted:

Yeah, I don't think it was anything malicious, and I'm personally not frightened or creeped-out by the ocean, but I'm sure someone in the ROV control room had an "oh shiiit..." moment when the whale almost caught the cable with his tale.

I would love to see a sleeping pod of sperm whales some day. They sleep vertically and bob slowly in the water to breathe:

Alehkhs posted:

Yeah, I don't think it was anything malicious, and I'm personally not frightened or creeped-out by the ocean, but I'm sure someone in the ROV control room had an "oh shiiit..." moment when the whale almost caught the cable with his tale.

I would love to see a sleeping pod of sperm whales some day. They sleep vertically and bob slowly in the water to breathe:

Three-Phase posted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P__-YVYdNmE

Here's one where they're over 9000 feet underwater and a shark swims into the frame. (It's a sleeper shark.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zyoLBU4SX8

For the marine biologist here - this was billed as a "Possible Megalodon" - it looks to me like this is just another sleeper shark, and the film doesn't give a really good size reference.

That's something I really noticed on those oil rig videos - it was really hard to grasp the size of the underwater structures until the whale came into frame. I thought "man, that stuff's a lot larger/longer than the video looked like."

Bash Ironfist posted:

I had no idea they did that. That is incredible, I'd love to see that as well.

Alehkhs posted:

Yeah, I don't think it was anything malicious, and I'm personally not frightened or creeped-out by the ocean, but I'm sure someone in the ROV control room had an "oh shiiit..." moment when the whale almost caught the cable with his tale.

I would love to see a sleeping pod of sperm whales some day. They sleep vertically and bob slowly in the water to breathe:

DropsySufferer posted:

Humans could never be outside with the abyssal animals anyway because pressure and temperature would be instant death.

The Stygian posted:

It would need to be either really loving hot or really loving cold for temperature to play a part in causing 'instant death'. I don't actually think the deep ocean is either of those things.

The Stygian posted:

It would need to be either really loving hot or really loving cold for temperature to play a part in causing 'instant death'. I don't actually think the deep ocean is either of those things.

Extra Smooth Balls posted:

Isn't it around −4°C down there?

Extra Smooth Balls posted:

For such huge hardcore killing machines, sperm whales are oddly adorable.
I've been sharing a lot of the more interesting bits of this thread with my kid, although not the byford dolphin accident.

quote:

A group of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has witnessed a rare attack that confirmed why killer whales were long ago given their name.

Last month, researchers on the ship David Starr Jordan saw a group of nine adult sperm whales brutally attacked by a pod of about 25 killer whales 60 miles off the central California coast, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported on Thursday.

During the five-hour attack, one adult sperm whale was killed and eaten while several others were bloodied, officials said.

''Never, in eight years of sea duty, have I seen anything like this,'' Lieut. Comdr. Tim Clancy said.

quote:

The mother gray whale struggled valiantly to save her calf, lifting it out of the water to breathe, but she was no match for the coordinated attack as the orcas repeatedly grabbed the fatigued calf and flipped it upside down to prevent it from breathing. During the half hour that the first group of whale watchers observed the contest for survival, the two humpbacks splashed, 'trumpeted', and moved in as close as a body length from the grey whale mother and her calf.

At this point, whale researchers Alisa Schulman-Janiger and Nancy Black arrived on the scene in Monterey Bay Whale Watch boat Pt. Sur Clipper, and continued to observe the unusual encounter for nearly seven hours. Shortly after their arrival the baby whale was killed, and the mother took temporary refuge by their boat before heading towards shore.

Schulman-Janiger told Digital Journal that first two, then three more humpbacks joined the original pair, and the seven humpbacks "repeatedly followed the orcas, trumpet blowing, tail slashing, rolling, and head raising. They kept returning to the area of the carcass where the orcas were ripping into the blubber of the dead calf".

quote:

This is apparently a case of humpback whales trying to help a member of another cetacean species. This shows that they are capable of tremendous behavioral flexibility, giving even more credence to reports of cetaceans coming to the aid of human beings. They seem to have the capacity to generalize from one situation to another and from one kind of being to another. Moreover, they seem to sympathize with members of other species and have the motivation to help.

One reason may be that humpback whales, and many other cetaceans, have specialized cells in their brains called Von Economo neurons (“spindle cells”) and these are shared with humans, great apes, and elephants. The exact function of these elongated neurons is still unknown but they are found in exactly the same locations in all mammal brains for the species that have them.

What is intriguing is that these parts of the mammal brain are thought to be responsible for social organization, empathy, speech, intuition about the feelings of others, and rapid "gut" reactions. So the presence of these cells is neurological support for the idea that cetaceans are capable of empathy and higher-order thinking and feeling.

In either case these whales are apparently demonstrating a high level of sensitivity and concern (morality, if you will) that is laudable in any species.

Ambrose Burnside posted:

What enables sperm whales to dive so deep and stave off the incredible pressure? Creatures that live at the bottom their whole lives or have insubstantial bodies without sinuses and significant crushable bits of their bodies are one thing, but mammals have all kinds of cavities and voids in them compared to a jellyfish or other invertebrate.

Ambrose Burnside posted:

What enables sperm whales to dive so deep and stave off the incredible pressure? Creatures that live at the bottom their whole lives or have insubstantial bodies without sinuses and significant crushable bits of their bodies are one thing, but mammals have all kinds of cavities and voids in them compared to a jellyfish or other invertebrate.

Alehkhs posted:

Well, I know that one of the hazards of minisubs like Alvin when near hydrothermal vents is that they need to be careful not to drift/stray into the streams of ~400°C water, because the portholes would begin to melt from the heat - at which point pressure would take over.

Immediately outside the super-heated streams of water however, temperatures quickly drop to around 3°C (this varies slightly with latitude).


So keep that temperature range in mind when you see footage of animals near the vents. The shrimp in this video, for instance, need to remain in a temperate margin near the vent's stream to feed upon the chemoautotrophic bacteria found there, but not too close lest they themselves get cooked. Near the end of the clip, you can actually see that some shrimp are close enough to "surf" the edge of the stream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcbFCo3xH14

Ambrose Burnside posted:

What enables sperm whales to dive so deep and stave off the incredible pressure? Creatures that live at the bottom their whole lives or have insubstantial bodies without sinuses and significant crushable bits of their bodies are one thing, but mammals have all kinds of cavities and voids in them compared to a jellyfish or other invertebrate.

quote:

For decades now, scientists at the NOAA have been tracking a mysterious whale song that sounds like the ghostly howls of a drowned tuba player. The sounds have been identified as belonging to a single whale, who sings at a frequency unlike any other whale in the world.

Dubbed "52 Hertz" after the frequency range in which he typically sings, the animal has been called the loneliest whale in the world, since his love songs seem destined to go unanswered. Most other species of baleen whale, such as blue whales and humpbacks, sing at frequencies much lower, between the 15-25 Hertz range.

Not only does 52 Hertz sing at a much higher frequency, but his calls are also shorter and more frequent than those of other whales. It's as if he speaks his own language-- a language of one. Even stranger, 52 Hertz does not follow the known migration route of any extant baleen whale species. He sings alone and travels alone.

Could this individual be the last of a previously unknown species of baleen whale? That's one possibility. Whale biologists have also proposed that he could be malformed, or maybe a rare hybrid-- perhaps a blue whale and fin whale cross. Whatever the explanation, 52 Hertz is one of a kind.

There's also some evidence that he is maturing, since his voice has deepened slightly since the Navy first identified him in 1992, according to a 2004 article at the New York Times.

Although 52 Hertz's exact age is unknown, he continues to survive 20 years after his initial discovery. He was last recorded not far off the Aleutians and Kodiak Island, according to Alaska Dispatch-- which is also the closest he has come to land since first being tracked. You can view a zigzagging map of his migration routes between 1992 and 2004 here.

While whale lovers may lament the mournful tale of the loneliest whale in the world, there is some reason for hope, too. 52 Hertz seems to be healthy, in spite of his loneliness.

"The fact that this individual has been capable of existing in that harsh environment [for so many years] indicates there is nothing wrong with it," said Dr. Kate Stafford, a researcher at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, to the New York Times.

The whale's resilience could also be viewed as inspiration to anyone with a lonely heart. Despite 20 years of bellowing unanswered hymns into the cold echoes of the North Pacific, he sings on.

A famous Zen koan asks: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Perhaps it resonates in 52 Hertz.

bonestructure posted:

All of the whale talk made me think of the Loneliest Whale.

QuickbreathFinisher posted:

Many mammals have them (giraffes use them to keep the blood vessels in their heads from exploding from extreme blood pressure when lowering their heads)

Private Eye posted:

They aren't unaffected by the constant dives to deeper depths - their bones are pitted and and eroded over their lives as they still suffer from the bends: http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041...s041220-13.html

I'm a marine biology student based at the NOC in Southampton, where in the foyer we have the hilariously flamboyant figurehead from the challenger expeditions. Makes me laugh everytime I walk past it- http://www.challenger-society.org.uk/node/1272

Just finished a deep sea module (had the exam last thursday), and it's no doubt one of the most interesting aspects of marine biology.

escape artist posted:

I always wanted to play that game, but don't have a console. So instead, I watched a lot of the stuff on Youtube. I'll be perfectly honest-- I had to get drunk to watch a lot of it.

Three-Phase posted:

For the marine biologist here - this was billed as a "Possible Megalodon" - it looks to me like this is just another sleeper shark, and the film doesn't give a really good size reference.

PlotDevice posted:

The main thing I took away from this is that sperm whales are loving rad as hell.

U.T. Raptor posted:

Zorak's done a completed LP of the first one and is currently doing the second, maybe try watching them?

Gormless Gormster posted:

Am I a monster if my first reaction to a majestic and extremely rare creature is hunger?

bonestructure posted:

All of the whale talk made me think of the Loneliest Whale.

http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_n...-the-world.html

You can hear NOAA's recordings of the 52 Hertz Whale here: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acou...nds_52blue.html

GuestBob posted:

Can I restate my question about how much edible material is in the silt on the sea floor.

Ooze is pelagic sediment that consists of at least 30% of microscopic remains of either calcareous or siliceous planktonic debris organisms. The remainder typically consists almost entirely of clay minerals. As a result, the grain size of oozes is often bimodal with a well-defined biogenic silt- to sand-size fraction and siliciclastic clay-size fraction. Oozes can be defined by and classified according to the predominate organism that compose them. For example, there are diatom, coccolith, foraminifera, globigerina, pteropod, and radiolarian oozes. Oozes are also classified and named according their mineralogy, i.e. calcareous or siliceous oozes. Whatever their composition, all oozes accumulate extremely slowly, at no more than a few cm per millennium.

Calcareous ooze is ooze that is composed of at least 30% of the calcareous microscopic shells—also known as tests--of foraminifera, coccolithophores, and pteropods. This is the most common pelagic sediment by area, covering 48% of the world ocean's floor. This type of ooze accumulates on the ocean floor at depths above the carbonate compensation depth. It accumulates more rapidly than any other pelagic sediment type, with a rate that varies from 0.3 – 5 cm / 1000 yr.

Siliceous ooze is ooze that is composed of at least 30% of the siliceous microscopic "shells" of plankton, such as diatoms and radiolaria. Siliceous oozes often contain lessor proportions of either sponge spicules, silicoflagellates or both. This type of ooze accumulates on the ocean floor at depths below the carbonate compensation depth. Its distribution is also limited to areas with high biological productivity, such as the polar oceans, and upwelling zones near the equator. The least common type of sediment, it covers only 15% of the ocean floor. It accumulates at a slower rate than calcareous ooze: 0.2–1 cm / 1000 yr.

Red clay, also known as either "brown clay" or "pelagic clay," accumulates in the deepest and most remote areas of the ocean. It covers 38% of the ocean floor and accumulates more slowly than any other sediment type, at only 0.1-0.5 cm / 1000 yr.[1] Containing less than 30% biogenic material, it consists of sediment that remains after the dissolution of both calcareous and siliceous biogenic particles while they settled through the water column. These sediments consist of eolian quartz, clay minerals, volcanic ash, subordinate residue of siliceous microfossils, and authigenic minerals. The bulk of red clay consists of eolian dust. These pelagic sediments also contain authegenic minerals that include zeolites, limonite and manganese oxides. Accessory constituents found in red clay include meteorite dust, fish bones and teeth, whale ear bones, and manganese micro-nodules.

Gormless Gormster posted:

Am I a monster if my first reaction to a majestic and extremely rare creature is hunger?

Gormless Gormster posted:

Am I a monster if my first reaction to a majestic and extremely rare creature is hunger?