The living fossil

This is the frilled shark. When open, the frilled shark’s mouth reveals 300 trident-shaped teeth aligned in 25 rows. Aside from its unmistakable toothiness, the mouth looks larger than that of other sharks because its jaws terminate at the back of the fish’s head instead of underneath the skull. The head appears to be all mouth, capped off at the throat region with six frilled gills, hence its name. 

The first gill slit cuts right across the throat, making it look as if someone sliced it with a knife there. The rest of the brown body is nearly identical to that of an eel, save for the elasmobranch’s small pectoral fins, dorsal fin, anal fin and lengthy caudal fin. Because of the fin placement and shape, R. Aidan Martin of theReefQuest Center for Shark Research once described the shark’s posterior as looking like “the wings on a throwing dart.”

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Japanese Spider Crab

The Japanese spider crab is the largest crab alive!  The Japanese spider crab has 8 legs and 2 big feeding arms, and generally lives under water but has been found on land.  The Giant Japanese spider crab can generally be found in the Pacific Ocean around Japan. They can live at depths of 50-300m  or 150-1000 feet. They generally have a dark orange body, with white spots on their legs.  In male specimens, the limbs on which the claws are located, become more extended than its legs.

This is a picture to show the scale of human to crab.

The spider crabs eyes are situated directly on the front, and two thorns stick out between them. Younger specimens of the spider crab feature hair and thorns on the body, and their frontal horns are longer, but these get shorter as they grow older. Giant spider crabs are omnivorous and scavenge for food.  They can eat algae, plants, mollusks and small fish, catching and tearing up the meat in their powerful pincers. Their long legs enable them to move quite quickly and stalk their prey.

I for one won't be swimming inshore in Japanese waters, unless I have one of the bigger varieties of harpoon-gun with me ! Or a big pair of rubber gloves, to hold a baby one, like this guy....

They move along the Ocean floor very slowly, and are consequently easy targets for hungry predators, that are big enough to attack it.  As some form of protection, they attach sponges and smaller animals to their shells to divert predators. The spider crab tends to live in Ocean vents or holes that are big enough to take it.  They are now hunted by fisherman as their meat is apparently quiet delicious. The spider crab  is caught using trawling nets, and is often eaten salted and steamed. They are caught in the Sagami, Tosa and Suruga bays and also around the Izu Islands.

During the spring when the crab lays its eggs, hunting them is prohibited and most fishermen thankfully obey these rules and the spider crab will not be served as a nice dish, allowing it to propagate so that it wont become and endangered species. One specimen had a 3.7m or 12 foot leg span and weighed 41 Lb!

Blobfish is Real!

So, I happened to be googling 'ugliest ocean animals' and this guy came up... at first I thought it was a joke but then I googled 'Blobfish real' and it came up with tons of info! So here you have it, the blobfish!

The blobfish, can grow up to 12 inches.  Its flesh is primarily a gelatinous mass with a density slightly less than water; this allows the fish to float above the sea floor without expending energy on swimming. Its relative lack of muscle is not a disadvantage as it primarily swallows edible matter that floats by in front of it.

It lives at depths of up to 800m, is rarely seen by humans but it lives at the same depths as other ocean organisms, such as crabs and lobsters and other edible sea creatures. As a result the fish, which is inedible, is being dragged up with other catches by trawler fishermen. Which in turn is leading to their extinction.

Royal Jelly!

Crown Jellyfish

    These jellies might just be the Royal jellies of the sea, I mean with a name like Crown Jellyfish how can you go wrong? 

The eye spots can be seen around the cap of the jellyfish while the whitish "dots" around the base are actually tentacles that are withdrawn. Jellyfish have a very advanced water vascular system that allows them to pump water in and out of their bodies thus pushing out or pulling in their tentacles.

The stinging cells or nematocysts are microscopic spring loaded darts found on the tentacles and are extremely sensitive to pressure. When touched, thousands can be discharged. This is the mechanism that normally allows them to capture their prey, ranging in size from microscopic plankton to small fish. Numerous mouths are found underneath the central frill of the jellyfish.

 The crown jellyfish is found at depths below 900m (3000 ft), where the water temperature is really cold. Also, the Crown jellyfish undergoes straight up and down movement from deep water in the daytime to shallow water at night in order to follow their prey, or catch their prey. 
crown Jellyfish are mostly found at mesopelagic depths (between 200m and 1000m, called the twilight zone) in all oceans worldwide, but mostly in the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic ocean. 

Unfortunately, this is all of the information that I could find on them so I really can't tell you if they are poisonous to humans( but they probably are!).

King of the Big Blue Sea

Blue Whale

So I have to say that one of my favorite animals in the world is a Blue Whale.  They are just AMAZING!

The blue whale is the largest mammal, possibly the largest animal, to ever inhabit the earth. The longest blue whale ever recorded was a 108-foot adult female caught during whaling efforts in Antarctica! In modern times, blue whales in the Southern Hemisphere reach lengths of 90-100 feet, but their Northern Hemisphere counterparts are smaller, on average 75 to 80 feet. Blue whales can weigh over 100 tons. Females are larger than males of the same age, the largest perhaps weighing as much as 150 tons.

The blue whale is thought to feed almost exclusively on small, shrimp-like creatures called euphausiids or krill. During the summer feeding season the blue whale gorges itself, consuming an astounding 4 tons (3.6 metric tons) or more each day. This means it may eat up to 40 million krill a day Blue whales may be found in all oceans of the world.

They migrate to tropical-to-temperate waters during winter months to mate and give birth to calves. They can feed throughout their range, in polar, temperate, or even tropical waters.