Sabine's Gull (Xema sabini), family Laridae, order Charadriiformes, Alaska

photograph by Audubon Alaska

Houle album art by Maéna Paillet

by swisstravelescape

malachite whale shark 🪲 this is for all the tauruses ♉️🤍

Photos by Cristian Muduc

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Exhausted and fine as hell 💙

It's been a while so here's another deep-sea animal you've never heard of—the bottle comb jelly.

This species, Aulacoctena acuminate, was observed by our remotely operated vehicle Doc Ricketts at 1,146 meters (3,760 feet) deep. These comb jellies are ctenophores, not true jellies. Like other comb jellies, they navigate through the water by beating their shimmering, hair-like cilia.

MBARI researchers have learned that gelatinous animals like the bottle comb jelly have a large impact on deep-sea food webs. Our archive of nearly 28,000 hours of deep-sea video contains hundreds of observations of deep-sea animals feeding. Examining these observations in detail revealed that jellies, comb jellies, and siphonophores are important as both predators and prey in the ocean’s midnight zone.

Learn all about comb jellies and their deep-sea relatives in our Animals of the Deep gallery.

greece, april 2024

Kallamar the twink

Chase Baker