About 2,400 meters (a mile and a half) below the surface of Monterey Bay, this “sea lily” clings to the wall of Monterey Canyon. Marine biologists call this animal a “stalked crinoid.” Crinoids are relatives of sea stars and sea urchins that live by capturing tiny food particles that drift by on ocean currents. The stalk on this crinoid keeps it up above the muddy seafloor, where the currents are slightly stronger. Like many sea stars, this stalked crinoid has five-fold symmetry, and a mouth located at the center of its feathery arms.

MBARI staff, scientists, and engineers will share their knowledge and enthusiasm about oceanographic research at our annual Open House this Saturday, July 21, 2012 from noon to 5 p.m. in Moss Landing, California. Highlights include science exhibits, technology demonstrations, deep-sea videos, presentations, robotic submersibles, and children’s activities. This free event is fun for the whole family! For more information, visit www.mbari.org/about/openhouse.html 

Lithodid crabs, small red shrimp (Pandalopsis sp.), bubblegum coral (Paragorgia arborea), yellow sponge (Staurocalyptus sp.), and a white branching finger sponge (Asbestopluma sp.).

Siphonophores like Apolemia are deep-sea predators—lying in wait for unfortunate animals to blunder into their curtain of stinging cells. Their diet can include tiny crustaceans such as copepods, fish, and even other siphonophores. Although many siphonophores eat whatever they can catch, others are specialists. Some use lures to attract specific prey. Others deploy their tentacles in elaborate feeding shapes such as coils.

This photograph shows the manipulator arm on one of MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) holding what looks like a chocolate brownie with a strange, spiky frosting. This is actually a chunk of basalt, a common type of volcanic rock, which MBARI geologists collected from the Endeavor segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, 7,300 feet below the ocean surface and 180 miles off the coast of Washington state. This rock may have been part of a hardened lava crust on a pool of molten lava created by an underwater volcanic eruption. At some point the molten lava drained out of the pool, leaving the hardened crust behind. The lava spikes on this rock probably formed on the underside of the crust (pointing downward), as the last remnants of the molten lava dripped down from the ceiling of the pool and solidified in the near freezing water of the deep sea. 

Growing up to two meters (six feet) long, Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) are formidable predators that hunt krill and a variety of fishes. Their normal habitat is within the tropical and subtropical waters of the East Pacific.

For more than 20 years, MBARI Senior Scientist Ken Smith has been conducting deep-sea research at Station M, 125 miles west of Point Conception in southern California. On their June 2012 expedition, Smith’s research team recovered a novel piece of equipment they deployed six months earlier, the Benthic Rover. About the size and weight of a small compact car, the Benthic Rover is a mobile lab. Moving slowly across the seafloor, the Benthic Rover measures how much oxygen seafloor animals are using.

The “club-tipped anemone” (Corallimorphus sp.) is actually a solitary coral.

Yellow goiter sponges, such as this Heterochone calyx on Pioneer Seamount, can grow to well over 3 feet across. Like most sponges, they eat by filtering microscopic bits of debris from the seawater that flows past them. MBARI researchers often see “forests” of sponges on the upper portions of seamounts, where eddying ocean currents may concentrate food particles. Even after large sponges die, their skeletons may survive for years on the seafloor.

Liponema brevicornis is a species of sea anemone commonly known as the pom-pom anemone. These large, round anemones roll around the seafloor like tumbleweeds.