The ocean is a vast, mysterious, and beautiful place. Underwater creatures get the opportunity to grow to extreme weights and lengths compared to us terrestrial animals. Could you imagine walking down the street and seeing 12 foot long crab pass by you by?!
See how Scuba Steve compares to some of the GIANTS OF THE DEEP 😀
So of course- the new Census of Marine Life has some amazing deep-sea critters!
This is the first global Census of Marine Life- it’s an accumulation of marine creatures over 10 years of marine exploration by over 2700 researchers from 80 different nations. The Census not only shows that the ocean is much richer than thought before, but it is also more vulnerable and interconnected than previously thought. Basically stating that the marine creatures are a lot more susceptible to changes in the environment- climate change for example. Even though this Census is huge, there is so much of our oceans unexplored that the Census numbers can only go up and up!
These are my favorite new species just added so far:
Yeti Crab (Discovery News)
This Yeti Crab is a new species discovered in the South Pacific Ocean- near Easter Island (you know the place with the huge statues of heads). Researchers decided this crab was so unique- that it belonged to a whole new family called Kiwaidae. The family is under a new genus Kiwa- which is Polynesia for “goddess for shellfish.”
Blue Jelly (Discovery News)
Well this little fella still has yet to be named. It’s an example of a colonial jelly-where its dark blue color helps protect it from the sun’s UV rays. This particular jelly pictured is only 3-4 mm wide.
