HulloThere

You know, I'm a predator guy through and through (basically all we've got in the mesopelagic!) but filter feeders can look sooooo cool when they wanna

YESSSS look at THAT! Very reasonable candidate for weirdest fish alive

Aww yiss. Platytroctes also have these weird cartilaginous ridges on the top and bottom which I haven’t seen in other tubeshoulders.

I actually graduated Medieval cum Beer from Stanford

The guy who set up the Alanon cult put a rattlesnake through a journalist’s door. Didn’t really work.

Zanclus were a very hard species to reject from last year’s Fishmas list of monospecific families, but I think I made the right choice.

Also: if you’ve never been to a reef habitat, I cannot overstate how *nuts* it feels to walk along the shore and see tropical fish vibing in the water next to you.

Can't stop seeing that as someone scooping up a massive ciabatta out of a pizza ove

Billions must slip slap slop

Bathylagus @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 896 #livingbioreactors #MarineLife

We're behind you here ok I only had my first hot honey pepperoni last year :(

An elongate dark fish laid on a measuring board with cm gradations. It is dark in colour, has a large head and a bulbous belly before tapering to a point along its long tail.

It is always cool to see species alive that you've previously only seen in trawls. This species (M. zugmayeri) is gonna be in my PhD dataset - one of the weirdest animals in there <3

Sooo cool - first footage of a live arrowtail I've ever seen. That erect first dorsal fin is such a giveaway that this is some sort of cod relative - pelagic gadiforms are all such freaks. Beautiful velvety dark colouration as well!

I'm going to be honest, very little of my aversion to cat shit is due to danger. It's largely about it being icky!

They’re really interesting to me as they’re one of the earlier groups to colonise the Mesopelagic - they were there before lanternfish! Also I like how that one dorsal fin ray makes them look like a unicorn ✨🦄 ✨

Yeeesss Bregmacros my beloved freak

Rhea’s one of those moons that you never really think about but, y’know what? Perfectly fine heavenly body. 6/10.

Cool how despite having massive caudal and pelvic fins all the motion seems to be coming from the tiny second dorsal, anal, and pectoral fins

Perfect animal

punctata/um is one of those specific names where you’re usually in for a nice time. reticulata or maculata are usually good, and I’m fond of anything that’s acantho- or similar usually

Front facing macrourid 👁️__👁️

Hohooohohoho chunky little thing

Now that is incredibly cool. Prototaxites, already one of the weirdest fossils, just got weirder!

South Africa is also similar but I guess neither of those countries are 1/3 of the continent they’re found on.

Is it partly just a consequence of the fact that no other country has its last word as the name of the continent it’s on? I guess the closest thing I can think of is Central African Republic, the demonym of which is Central African.

I keep telling you, he's 90 years old and he's dead!

Well if bankruptcy is the worst thing to happen to Job he should count himself lucky!

Only spacecraft ever launched into a direct solar escape trajectory, passed the orbit of the moon in 9 hours

New Horizons did its flyby right in the middle of my teenage Space Phase and I remember being so, so enthralled by it. It came just after Dawn visited Ceres which (no offence!) was just a Grey Rock with Craters and I had low expectations, so the completely alien world we got blew me away.