This video from CreatureCast.org shows a Siphonophore. Technically, it is a colony of Siphonophora. The Jellies Zone says some siphonophores can form chains over 100 feet long. CreatureCast explains that the jellyfish like creature seen below is actually a colony of organisms.
What looks like one long body in this video is actually a free-swimming colony of clones — many genetically identical bodies that are all attached. But each body in the group isn't just like its neighbor. They each do a specific job for the colony. Some individuals will swim, some will catch food, and some will reproduce.
You can see a couple other interesting videos of Siphonophores here and here.
Robotic Fish to Monitor Pollution in Spanish Harbor
CBS News reports that a school of battery-powered robotic fish will monitor pollution in the Spanish harbor of Gijon. The robotic fish contain special sensors to help them avoid rocks, ships and other objects so they won't need to be remotely monitored or remote controlled.
The robotic fish will patrol the harbor of Gijon, in northern Spain under a $3.6 million grant from the European Union. Hu said Gijon was chosen because port authorities there had expressed an interest in the technology.
The plan might seem "like something straight out of science fiction," said Rory Doyle, a researcher working on the project, but he explained that there was a very simple reason for choosing fishlike machines to monitor the harbor's environmental health.
"The design of fish which nature has produced is a very energy-efficient one," Doyle said. "The fish's efficiency is created by hundreds of millions of years' of evolution. Submarines come nowhere near it."
Information gathered from the robo-fish would be transmitted to the port's control center using a wireless Internet signal when the devices surfaced. The data gathered would be used to create a three-dimensional pollution map of the harbor's area.
Here's a video (no sound) that shows the robotic fish in action. (via Daily Mail, Ecofriend.org)
Histiophryne psychedelica is new species of fish that appears to bounce on the ocean floor like a rubber ball. Live Science says the carnivorous frogfish has eyes like ours as well as a fleshy chin and cheeks. More articles about the fish can be found at The Guardian, Science Daily, USA Today and Seattle Times.
Below is a video of a crab hitching a ride of a jellyfish. The iReport entry says the video was shot 30 miles southwest of Sanibel Island in the Gulf of Mexico. (via Twang of the Voice and Boing Boing)
Scientists Worried About Lionfish Population Explosion
You have probably heard of the jellyfish invasion but scientists are also concerned about a population explosion in the number of lionfish. Lionfish are venomous and they are considered a danger to people, coral reefs and commercial fisheries. They are considered a pest as they eat smaller fish. Practical Fishkeeping has an article about the growth of the Lionfish off of New York here. Science Daily has an article about how the lionfish are a major threat to coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean. The video below about the lionfish population explosion is from the Associated Press.
Jellyfish Population Booming and Frustrating Beachgoers
There seem to reports of jellyfish problems around the Globe. There may be giant Jellyfish in the Sea of Japan but smaller ones are causing a problem even in the U.S. Beaches in the Northeast have been suffering from a jellyfish invasion. CBS News reports that thousands of competitors in the recent New York City triathlon were stung by jellyfish in the Hudson Bay.
"We were here a few weeks ago and there were a lot of jellyfish. We didn't even go in the water. It was horrible," one teen told CBS News correspondent Susan Koeppen.
And with thousands being stung by jellyfish this summer, lifeguards at Long Beach are armed with spray bottles filled with alcohol and water to take away the pain, says Koeppen.
"We didn't get these a lot years ago," says Chief Lifeguard Paul Gillespie, "but now they're, we're getting, the frequency of them a lot more. ... We've had some of them that were just (so) tremendous that we have to come and pick off the beach."
It's not just beaches seeing a problem, Koeppen points out. "During the recent New York City triathlon, thousands of competitors were stung by jellyfish in the Hudson River.
Here's a video from CBS that blames things like global warming, pollution and over-fishing on the global jellyfish problem.
This National Geographic video shows a massive school of jellyfish. These jellyfish are 95% water, brainless and have been around for 65 million years.
This puffer fish in a river delta in Tanzania, Africa manages to avoid being made into a snack by a river otter. The puffer fish inflates itself into a beach ball sized version of itself. The otter eventually gives up and swims off - a good thing for the otter because the puffer fish has a poisonous gall bladder.
The Mola Mola Can Gain Over 60 Million Times Its Birthweight
This Mola Mola or Ocean Sunfish is one of the largest and stangest animals found in the sea. The Mola Mola is the world's largest bony fish. As the National Geographic video below describes it - the Mola Mola looks like a "massive swimming head." The Mola Mola can weigh up to 4,000 pounds. It can gain over sixty million times its birthweight. For more on this strange fish check out the listings on Fishbase.org, OceanLight.com and Wikipedia. The Ocean Sunfish website also has lots of facts, photos and news.
This video report by the Wall Street Journal's Sebastian Moffett shows a Japanese boat where a scientist catches jellyfish, part of a new wave that's menacing fisherman. These huge six-foot jellyfish have become a real threat to the Sea of Japan. Global warming has been brought up as one of the possibilities for the emergence of the giant jellies.
400 million years ago there lived a huge fish with an extremely powerful bite. The BBC reports that the bite of the 10-meter long Dunkleosteus terrelli could exert a force of 5,000 Newtons on its prey.
The extinct creature, Dunkleosteus terrelli, could bring its jaws together with a remarkable force of 5,000 Newtons (1,100lbs-force).
This performance surpasses all living fish, including today's great white shark, and puts it up with some of the most powerful bites in all animals.
Details appear in the UK Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
US researchers Mark Westneat and Philip Anderson tell the journal that higher bite forces have only been reported for some large alligators and dinosaurs.
T. rex, for example, could clamp down on its meal with a crushing force of 13,000 Newtons (3,000lbs-force); but a modern spotted hyena, by comparison, exerts a force of only 2,000 Newtons (500lbs-force) when it cracks bones in its mouth.
The Dunkleosteus could also open its mouth amazingly quickly -- in "one fiftieth of a second" according to the BBC. With that speed the ancient fish was also able to suck small prey into its mouth. With this "tractor beam"
effect and the poweful snap of its jaws Dunkleosteus was likely a fierce ocean predator. Dunkleosteus may have needed the powerful bite to break through the hard shells found on crustaceans and the bony covering protecting some fish that lived with Dunkleosteus 400 million years ago. The information about the Dunkleosteus was first published in Biology Letter. You can read an abstract of the article here.
Reuters reports that a shocking study published in Science found that ocean life and seafood could be depleted by as early as 2048. The scientific data also indicates that marine biodiversity has already crashed by as much as 29% since 1960.
In an analysis of scientific data going back to the 1960s and historical records over a thousand years, the researchers found that marine biodiversity -- the variety of ocean fish, shellfish, birds, plants and micro-organisms -- has declined dramatically, with 29 percent of species already in collapse.
Extending this pattern into the future, the scientists calculated that by 2048 all species would be in collapse, which the researchers defined as having catches decline 90 percent from the maximum catch.
This applies to all species, from mussels and clams to tuna and swordfish, said Boris Worm, lead author of the study, which was published in the current edition of the journal Science.
Ocean mammals, including seals, killer whales and dolphins, are also affected.
"Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging," Worm said in a statement. "In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected."
Boris Worm, the lead author on the study, told Reuters that most of the destruction to ocean life is from over-fishing and habitat destruction. It was not a completely bleak outlook. The study did say that techniques like marine-life reserves and no-fishing zones could be helpful. Some types of aquaculture involving vegetarian fish could also be helpful. They better be implemented quickly because a planet without fish or very scarce in ocean-life is not going to be pleasant and will probably have serious repercussions for the land dwelling life forms on Earth.
The beaches of the Mediterranean are on alert after swarms of jellyfish have appeared near the coast. The BBC reports that 30,000 people have already been stung by the jellyfish this summer alone. Some beaches have also been temporarily closed.
Some Spanish beaches have been closed, but Sicily and North Africa are also reported to be badly affected.
Researchers say at least 30,000 people have been stung since summer began.
Marine biologists blame hot dry weather for bringing jellyfish closer to the shore, and say overfishing may be increasing jellyfish numbers.
A recent survey by the Oceana environmental group found concentrations of jellyfish of more than 10 per square metre in some areas off the Spanish coast.
Hot, dry is weather is blamed for brining the jellyfish closer to the shore. Global warming and overfishing could bring even more of the jellyfish in future summers. Japan has also has a problem with jellyfish. They have a giant jellyfish problem. Recently, giant jellyfish in Japan blocked a cooling filter at a nuclear reactor.
The Washington Post reports that scientists are attempting fish counts as concerns about over fishing continue to rise. Counting fish is no easy task and correct counts are often ignored for political reasons -- typically with disastrous results.
What is clear is that over the past century, the world's fish stocks have shrunk. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that one-quarter of the world's marine stocks are overfished, or harvested faster than the fish can reproduce to replace them, and another half are approaching that point.
Nearly half of the two dozen fisheries managed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission are listed as depleted or unknown, including the American lobster, red drum and river herring.
The loss of a stock even temporarily, scientists say, can cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars and echo throughout the ecosystem, affecting humans, too.
But measuring nature's bounty remains a challenge. Where science leaves a gap, politics rushes in.
In 1992, the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery, which devastated Canadian and American fishermen and uprooted entire towns, came about partly because politicians ignored dismal harvest figures in favor of more optimistic forecasts, scientists say.
Some fish can be raised in fish farms but if we overfish our rivers and oceans there will be no way to replenish the stocks of some fish.
The BBC reports that an area rich in previously undiscovered species of fish and other sea life has been on atoll near Saba Island in the Carribbean.
The dives took place during the first two weeks of January, and involved a scientific team of 12 from Conservation International, the Netherlands Antilles government and the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, as well as local fisherman.
Scientists chose to explore the area because although it was predicted to have high concentrations of marine life, only a small number of species had been reported.
During the dives, the researchers counted a total of 200 species of fish, over 150 more than previously known.
Among their find were two new species of fish, both gobies, which have the distinctive feature of fused pelvic fins on the underside of their body which forms a sucker.
"Many [gobies] live in the canals inside sponges, so we take samples out of sponges, and open the canals up to search for the small fish that can be in there," explained Dr Smith, a scientist on the expedition from Conservation International.
Unfortunately, the hotspot is at risk from anchors the size of offices that drop from supertankers crushing coral and marine life. The BBC article says scientists are working to the get the area designated as a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA) by the International Marine Organizaton (IMO). The BBC provides several pictures of the marine life discovery here.
400 million years ago there lived a huge fish with an extremely powerful bite. The BBC 
