Steve Haddock

Looks great! Sorry if this is in the documentation but can it do 3-D with two orthogonal cameras?
Asking for a friend, srsly.
👀@claynerd.bsky.social

Orange+pink colored ostracod Gigantocypris, with pink eggs inside its carapace and large forward-facing reflectors. Diameter about 2cm. From The Radiant Sea. S.Haddock•MBARI.

Gigantocypris is always a crowd-pleaser, but I have never seen those black amphipods!
(Get your student a little glass photo tank?)

Related to high pressure, @ibudin.bsky.social and Jacob Winnikoff led a study which showed that a particular lipid headgroup (PPE) is more abundant in membranes of deep #ctenophores. 🧪🦑
What was amazing was when they put PPE into bacterial membranes, the bacteria became more pressure tolerant!

cc @amymaxmen.bsky.social

cc @blancobercial.bsky.social @dts.bsky.social

The re-analysis of this #sponge #ctenophore study made me realize how important it is to really *look* at your data.
Their filtering pipeline was meant to retain "strong" genes, but many of them had NO ctenophores and most had polyphyletic sponges.
Time to put down the pitchforks for a while.

Poster showing details for a talk entitled The Radiant Sea, Unveiled. To be held at 6pm on Friday January 16th at 35 Pacific Ave in Santa Cruz, CA

This is a limited, regionally relevant post, but… I’ll be giving a talk at the Sanctuary Exploration Center in Santa Cruz on Friday Jan 16th. Come say hi if you’re in town. 🦑🧪
(I’m presenting in San Francisco in early Feb as well)

Shelled
Garnish

‘Cleave’ can refer to splitting something apart.

‘Cleave’ can also refer to the uniting of two things.

…what?

A word that is also its own opposite is called a ‘contronym.’

And by “great” I mean terrible..!

Great example!!

Sorry Mike. There is no rhyme nor reason, so I’m not surprised they hacked your most popular activities. 😡

My least favorite words (one category at least) are ones like nonplussed, inflammable, shelled, which can either mean one thing…or the exact opposite.

Wow. No kidding!
Without looking I guess:
Tocsin: alternate spelling of toxin
Kopje: a small antelope; a coin; a pastry
?? 📕 🙃 @merriam-webster.com
I used to use a 3x5 card as a bookmark and write down the cool/unfamiliar words on it as I read. I remember palimpsest…

What are some examples?

Cuttlefish or seahorses…!

Hard to watch this happen. What are your thoughts about reported bounties for publishing in certain journals?

Thrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽

This could be your dream job: working full time at the Friday Harbor Labs on marine invertebrate organismal biology. Nine month salary from an endowment, teaching and research faculty position.

apply.interfolio.com/178804

A pinkish, translucent, roughly bell-shaped jelly on a black background. Iridescent and red vertical stripe run down its tapered body. The top comes to a point, and the bottom is slightly flared. Upon close inspection, you can see little grape-like clusters of gonads next to the vertical stripes, which are the comb rows and main canals. This [relatively] massive Beroe was observed on a blue-water scuba dive off California. It is 18cm (7 inches) long. Photo: S.Haddock ©MBARI 2025 Fun faCT: If you look closely, you can see the reproductive cells on both sides of the canals. Viewed from the end, rather than the side, the female eggs develop next to the major body axis (like North, S, E, W), and male cells develop on the sides of the canal that are 45° off from the axes (NorthEast, SE, SW, NW). So here you can see 2 sets of eggs, and 4 sets of male gonads.

A survey for Ctenophore Ctuesday:
* What way is this comb jelly swimming? Up or Down?
🧪🦑🤷‍♂️🌊🤿

Agree!

Not the same chemicals as the insect fireflies. They are just all called “luciferin” but not all “sandwiches” have the same ingredients

I’m so glad I’m not in a position to make this decision, but what do you think about quitting vs staying in a no-win position of authority? In the end, quitting also removes another barrier to autocratic power.

Thanks! 😊

Screen shot of the Smithsonian Magazine web page showing the covers of 10 photography books, one of which is our book The Radiant Sea.

OK, this is wild!
Smithsonian Magazine included The Radiant Sea in their Best Photography Books of 2025! 😲
From the start, our goal was to entice people with pretty pictures, and then sneak in the science, so to have both appreciated is a complete thrill. 🦑🧪📸
Not bad for a couple biologists :^)

Thanks for the refresh!
It does check a lot of the boxes that make deep-sea animals fun to study. 🧪🦑🌊

Does This Pic Show a Real Animal Called a 'Carpet Shark'? The so-called “carpet shark,” or tasseled wobbegong, is said to inhabit shallow coral reefs near northern Australia.

Not to be “that guy” but … not a wobbegong according to snopes:
www.snopes.com/fact-check/t...

Not to mention… we just had our 4th ever sighting of Haliphron in over 35 years (7000+ ROV dives).

Its arms were closed up but we followed it until we could see that it was again holding a jellyfish…
m.youtube.com/watch?v=4_lt...

See also: www.nature.com/articles/sre...

Thank you, Danna! Your books are sure bets as well!

Thanks Linda :^)