Ghostlike Octopod in Deep Waters off Hawai'i

During the first dive of the expedition to explore on the northeast side of Necker Island, the Deep Discoverer remotely operated vehicle encountered this octopus, which confused several of our shore based scientists who have never seen anything like it. Upon further review, this ghostlike octopod is almost certainly an undescribed species and may not belong to any yet-described genus.



Video courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Hohonu Moana

The milky white creature, nicknamed "Casper the Friendly Ghost" by Twitter users, was caught on cameras mounted on the craft at a depth of 4,290 meters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. Describing the animal as an incirrate octopod, one of two main groupings of octopods, NOAA said it was the first time an incirrate was spotted so deep in the ocean.

"This animal was particularly unusual because it lacked the pigment cells, called chromatophores, typical of most cephalopods, and it did not seem very muscular," said Michael Vecchione, a research zoologist at NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service. Cephalopods belong to a biological class that includes octopuses, squid and cuttlefish.

The octopod "almost certainly" was one of a species never previously described by scientists, and it may well belong to a genus that has yet to be identified, Vecchione wrote on the NOAA's website. He could not be reached immediately for further comment.

NOAA has posted a video on the website showing a pale, rounded form with expressionless eyes and languid tentacles resting on the ocean floor. Its appearance led some Twitter users to say it resembled the cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Last week's discovery came during the first dive of the 2016 season from the Okeanos Explorer, a ship operated by NOAA that explores little-known parts of the oceans.
The remotely operated underwater vehicle Deep Discoverer came across the octopod near Necker Island, or Mokumanamana, on the northwestern end of the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Huffington Post

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Eerie Audio Recordings from the Bottom of the Mariana Trench

Deep rumbles, unearthly moans, high pitched screeching: these are but a few elements of the alien soundscape researchers have now recorded for the first time at Challenger Deep, the deepest known valley on the seafloor.

One might expect Challenger Deep—which sits at the bottom of the Mariana trench some 36,000 feet beneath the ocean surface—to be a quiet place. But in reality, we know very little about what life is like down there: as with most places where the sun never shines, the Mariana trench is shrouded in mystery.
“Light does not propagate underwater very far,” oceanographer Bob Dziak of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Gizmodo. “But sound waves travel long distances through the Earth’s oceans. Acoustics is really the best way to get a good picture of deep ocean environments.”



Dziak would know. He's the guy who led the recent effort to capture audio recordings from Challenger Deep. First, Dizak and his team had to design and build an instrument that could withstand the crushing 16,000 pounds-per-square-inch worth of pressure felt seven miles beneath the surface. Next, they developed a mooring system that would lower their audio gear—a titanium-encased hydrophone—at a slow, controlled speed, so that it could acclimate to the dramatic pressure buildup during its journey.

And after successfully planting a hydrophone in Challenger Deep, and making recordings for 23 straight days, Dziak's team had to wait until November for the weather and ship traffic to clear so they could haul it back up. It was a major effort, but now, we've got the first soundbites from the deepest spot on the Earth's surface to show for it.

They're as haunting and otherworldly as you might imagine.

Challenger Deep, it turns out, is an echo chamber for a cacophony of noises produced by everything from ships to baleen whales to Earth itself. In one recording, the researchers even identified the ominous rustling of a category four typhoon whipping across the surface miles above. "I was surprised by just how cleanly we can record whales, ships, and all sorts of activity taking place at the surface," Dziak noted.

Dziak hopes to return to Challenger Deep to capture more audio in the future. He'd also like to use his high-pressure hydrophone to explore other uncharted waters, including remote areas of the deep Arctic Ocean that are now starting to open up to ships as the ice caps retreat.

"It is akin to sending a deep-space probe to the outer solar system," Dziak said. "We're sending out a deep-ocean probe to the unknown reaches of inner space."

Gizmodo

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Bizarre Mutated Mountain Lion Discovered in Idaho

It’s hard to watch the media downplay all these bizarre animal events as if they just have no idea whatsoever that we’re under continual assault by ever-increasing radiation in our environment.
Last month a hunter’s dog was attacked by a mountain lion that had a set of teeth literally growing out of the top of its head.

The mainstream media reported on it as if it just has people “scratching their heads” as to what could possibly cause such a deformity, like these deformities aren’t popping up more and more these days and especially in the western half of the U.S.

“It has all of us scratching our heads,” biologist Zack Lockyear told the State Journal. “It’s a bizarre situation and a bizarre photo.”

Yeah, what could possibly be causing such strange deformities? Stock at Nuke Pro pointed out that the State Journal, the same outlet in Idaho that first reported on the mutated lion, was at the same time discussing sending even more radioactive materials to the Idaho National Lab for “vital spent fuel research” — despite a 1995 agreement reached to stop adding more spent fuels to the facility because it was contaminating water aquifers there.

No one denies that safety is primary, but INL is Idaho’s fifth largest private employer with some 3,900 employees earning an average salary of $88,635, according to Peters. Let’s get it right.

Yeah. Screw safety. Let’s get it right by sending more dangerous, aquifer-contaminating radioactive materials to Idaho! Because jobs. “Spent nuclear fuel is the most dirty, most dangerous byproduct of the nuclear energy process. They want more of it. Damn the lions, we need jobs!,” Stock wrote.
The lion and the lab were curiously located in the same part of Idaho, by the way.
As if Fukushima’s continued silent but deadly assault wasn’t bad enough.
But governments and corporations just keep upping the ante and downplaying the danger each time a new story comes out like this with the news media in tow, dutifully acting surprised again and again at all the mass animal die-offs and weird mutations that keep popping up everywhere.

The Daily Sheeple

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Vast hidden 'ocean' found under Chinese desert

Chinese scientists have discovered what could be a huge hidden ocean underneath one of the driest places on earth, the South China Morning Post reported on 30 July.
The Tarim basin in northwestern Xinjiang, China, is one of the driest places on Earth, but the vast amount of salt water concealed underneath could equal 10 times the water found in all five of the Great Lakes in the US.

"This is a terrifying amount of water," said professor Li Yan, who led the study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital.
"Never before have people dared to imagine so much water under the sand. Our definition of desert may have to change," he told the South China Morning Post.
Scientists had long suspected that a vast amount of melt water from nearby mountains had slipped beneath the basin, but the exact amount of water remained unknown.

Accidental discovery
Li's team made the discovery by accident. They had actually been looking for carbon dioxide, which is absorbed in certain areas - such as forests and oceans - called "carbon sinks."
Scientists study carbon sinks to gain a greater understanding of climate change.
Around 10 years ago, the team discovered that carbon dioxide had been disappearing into the basin for 10 years, but could not understand why.
After measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in samples from nearly 200 locations across the desert and comparing them to the carbon dioxide in melt water, they were able to calculate how much water had flowed into the basin.
"Our estimate is a conservative figure. The actual amount could be larger," Li told the paper.
The team will now work with other research scientists to see if other underground "oceans" could potentially exist underneath other deserts.
Li said it is likely large amounts of water will be found underneath the deserts, as the amount of carbon they potentially hold could be a trillion tonnes - the same amount of "missing" carbon on the planet.

IBT

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New Giant Volcano Below Sea Is Largest in the World

A 3-D map of the Tamu Massif formation, which scientists now say is one huge shield volcano
Illustration courtesy IODP

A volcano the size of New Mexico or the British Isles has been identified under the Pacific Ocean, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) east of Japan, making it the biggest volcano on Earth and one of the biggest in the solar system.

Called Tamu Massif, the giant shield volcano had been thought to be a composite of smaller structures, but now scientists say they must rethink long-held beliefs about marine geology.

“This finding goes against what we thought, because we found that it’s one huge volcano,” said William Sager, a geology professor at the University of Houston in Texas. Sager is lead author in a study about the find that was published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience.

“It is in the same league as Olympus Mons on Mars, which had been considered to be the largest volcano in the solar system,” Sager told National Geographic.

Tamu Massif is a rounded dome that measures about 280 by 400 miles (450 by 650 kilometers), or more than 100,000 square miles. Its top lies about 6,500 feet (about 2,000 meters) below the ocean surface, while the base extends down to about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) deep. Tamu Massif dwarfs the largest active volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, which measures about 2,000 square miles (5,200 square kilometers).

Made of basalt, Tamu Massif is the oldest and largest feature of an oceanic plateau called the Shatsky Rise in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The total area of the rise is similar to Japan or California.

Sager started studying Tamu Massif about 20 years ago. He named it Tamu Massif because Tamu is short for Texas A&M University, where the scientist worked at the time; massif is French for “massive” and is a scientific term for a large mountain.

Scientists had known about the Shatsky Rise since the early 20th century, when it was first mapped, he explained. “We knew it was a big mountain range, but we didn’t know what the structure was like or how it formed,” said Sager.

He added that Tamu Massif is different from classic seamounts, the volcanoes that protrude off the ocean floor around the world by the tens of thousands. Tamu Massif is much larger, with a much more gentle slope than classic seamounts, Sager said.

Near the summit of Tamu Massif, the slope is only around one degree, he said. Down the flank the slope is half a degree, and it’s even less than that near the base. (The average slope of a staircase is 40 degrees, and an easy ski slope is about 10 degrees.) ”If you were standing on the massif, you would have a hard time knowing which way is down,” said Sager.

Finding an Unusual Structure

Scientists had thought the giant Shatsky Rise formed over time as a composite of several volcanoes that grew together, in a process similar to the way the big island of Hawaii was made by the outpourings of five separate volcanoes that were in close proximity.

But when Sager and colleagues looked at seismic data of Tamu Massif, they were surprised at what they found.

“We saw what appear to be lava flows going out from the center of the volcano in all directions, with no obvious large secondary source of volcanism, so that was a surprise,” Sager said.

The team also performed geochemical analysis on core samples taken from the massif. They found that the huge structure appeared to be made out of the same rock, of the same age.

So the scientists concluded that Tamu Massif was created by a single volcano, and probably over a relatively short period of time of a few million years. The volcano went “extinct,” meaning inactive, shortly after it formed, Saged added. That was probably in the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous period, about 145 million years ago.

“If what they are saying is correct, that is truly a massive volcano,” said Brian Jicha, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin who has received funding from National Geographic to study the formation of the Aleutian Islands.

“There are a lot of these oceanic plateaus, so if some of them really are just volcanoes, this paper might begin to change the way we think oceanic plateaus are built, and maybe even some of the continental basalt plateaus,” said Jicha, who was not involved in the study.

Sager agrees that more work is needed on other oceanic plateaus. “There could be around a dozen of these things out there,” he said about the possibility of more large shield volcanoes under the sea.

Sager noted that although Tamu Massif currently appears to be the largest single volcano on Earth, there are still larger volcanic complexes, such as the Siberian Traps, which may hold other mysteries. Those features were likely made up of molten rock from different sources, he said, unlike Tamu Massif's formation according to the new theory.

How Did the Volcano Form?

Sager said scientists are still trying to work out the details of how Tamu Massif formed.

He said it seems likely that the spot on the seafloor had the right mix of elements, including a boundary of three tectonic plates, thin crust, and a source of hot magma below that was able to bubble up to the surface. The molten rock poured out, and then built up a wide, gradual rise as it cooled.
Precisely how the magma made it to the surface is an open question. Perhaps a blob of the rock got superheated, and then rose to the surface due to buoyancy. Or, cracks in the overlying crust could have opened, allowing molten rock to spill out.

The next step will be more work to figure out what the source of the magma was, said Sager. He would like to go back and measure the magnetic properties of the rock, using a ship that is equipped with GPS. The data will give him a better idea how the lava spread out, he said.

Jicha added that “if it is indeed really one volcano, and the case is fairly compelling, the amount of magma that had to go through the lithosphere [crust] is off the charts.”

“Not only does [Tamu Massif] give us a new wow in the form of a giant new volcano, but it gives us new insight into a building block of an oceanic plateau,” said Sager.

He’s not sure if the new volcano will help scientists better understand Olympus Mons on Mars, but noted that “we can see the surface of Mars better than we can see the bottom of the ocean.”

Tamu Massif, he said, “has been hiding out for 145 million years because it found a good place to hide.”

National Geographic 

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Billions Of Bizarre Blue Animals Wash Ashore On The West Coast

Beaches along the west coast of America have been swamped with transparent blue creatures resembling jellyfish, known as “purple sails” or “by the wind sailors.” The phenomenon is a result of the wind's direction and probably not an indicator of environmental destruction. The sheer scale of this event is breathtaking, with estimates of a billion specimens washed ashore.
Velella velella are not true jellyfish but a smaller, less deadly relative of the Portuguese man-of-war. They are siphonophores, colonies of zooids that operate together as if they are one animal.


^{Credit: Jennifer Nicole Buchanan via Shutterstock. Individual Velella colonies are small, but in their millions they can dominate a beach.}
Velella float in the open ocean and use poisonous tentacles to catch prey such as plankton. Balloon-like bubbles stick above the water's surface and catch the wind in such a way that they sail at an angle to it. Every few years, however, prevailing winds in the wrong direction wash large quantities onto beaches where they die. This spring has proven particularly disastrous for the northern Pacific population as winds were sustained long enough to wash huge numbers onto the coast.
As usual, the beaches are not hit at the same time, with the wave of blue starting in Washington and sweeping south over a period of several weeks. Coincidentally, there have also been major strandings in Italy at the same time.
Despite their numbers, permits are required to collect them. Kevin Raskoff of Monterey Peninsula College told National Geographic that touching them is unwise. Unlike both the man-of-war and many true jellyfish, their toxins will do little damage to the skin, but can rub off. If you rub your eyes after receiving some of the venom on your fingers, “you're going to feel it,” Raskoff said.
Last year's American Velella stranding was unusually late, leading to reports such as this one.

It is also rare to have such large strandings on the same coastline in successive years.

^{Credit: Bettina Walter, "Velella velella," via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0}

 

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Mysterious 'Glow Worm' Found in Peruvian Rainforest

A mysterious glowing worm has been discovered lighting up the soil in the Peruvian rainforest.
The strange glow worms, which are thought to be the larval stage of an as-yet-unidentified species of beetle, may use their phosphorescence to lure unsuspecting flies and ants into their waiting, open jaws.
Ants or termites will "fly right into their jaws, and then they'll just clamp shut and that's their meal," said Aaron Pomerantz, an entomologist who works with a rainforest expedition company at the Refugio Amazonas near the Tambopata Research Center in Peru, where the glowing larvae were discovered. [See Images of the Glowing Worm]
In tests, the glow worms readily devoured stick insects and termites, Pomerantz said. Their style of attack seems similar to that of the enormous, man-eating worms in the 1990 campy movie "Tremors," albeit at a much smaller scale, he said. "They're underground, and they burst from the earth," Pomerantz told Live Science.
Nature photographer Jeff Cremer found the tiny pinpricks of light glowing in a wall of earth when he was working at a lodge in the Peruvian jungle. On closer inspection, Cremer discovered several dozen of these tiny insects, which measured about 0.5 inches (1.2 centimeters), shining green in the night.
Cremer brought them to the attention of entomologists who work at the rainforest nature lodge, who had never seen anything similar in the region.
The team determined that the worms were the larvae of an unknown species of click beetle. These beetles, which belong to the family Elateridae, use a fast popping or "clicking" motion to escape predators, Pomerantz said. Adults may feed on flowers and nectar, but the larvae are probably predatory.
There are more than 10,000 species of click beetles, including about 200 that are bioluminescent, meaning that they give off light. These strange little creatures may potentially be cousins of Brazilian fire beetles and could belong to the group of bugs called Pyrophorini, Pomerantz said.
Brazilian fire beetles burrow into termite mounds, creating ethereal, glowing towers at night, Pomerantz said. Though it's not exactly clear how the newly discovered insects produce light, similar creatures use a class of molecules known as luciferins to give off their ghostly yellow glow. Pyrophorini typically maintain a constant glow through the night, and may even shine brighter when a predator touches them.
Bioluminescent animals usually glow to either lure in prey or to warn predators that they contain noxious chemicals. But the glowing also occasionally serves other purposes. For instance, fireflies' blinking is essentially a come-hither signal for potential mates, Pomerantz said.
In the case of the click-beetle larvae, it seems the creatures glow to lure in prey, Pomerantz said. The Brazilian click beetles aggregate in termite mounds and glow to attract more prey.
Right now, the team isn't sure if it's discovered a completely new species or a new subspecies of an already known species of beetle larva, but the researchers are contacting experts in Brazil to find out, Pomerantz said.

Discovery

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Never-before-seen purple jellyfish discovered on Sunshine Coast

A bright purple, alien-like jellyfish has washed up on Coolum Beach and an expert says it may be a new species.

Lifeguard Jamie Smith says a local fisherman alerted him and his partner to the discovery after pulling the sea creature up on to the beach to avoid getting stung.

"The thing that struck me was how long the tentacles [are] and the colour," Mr Smith said.
"It was so vibrant and pure."
Jellyfish expert Lisa Gershwin says it is probably a new species.
"I've never seen anything like it," she said.
"And honestly, being purple it alerts me to the fact that it might be a new species.
"I think it's a better than even chance that it's new to science."
Ms Gershwin, from CSIRO marine and atmospheric research centre, warned even though the jellyfish was dead, it can still sting.
"It can still give you a wallop, although this guy's probably not a real major stinger," she said.
"He's not in a really stingy group."
Ms Gershwin says the jellyfish belongs to the Genis Thysanostoma group, which are not common in Australian waters.
"To see a Thysanostoma is a real treat because they're not really common, we get reports of them maybe a couple a year," she said.
"I've never seen it in purple."
Ms Gershwin says this type of jellyfish is recognised by their unique metre-long tentacles, which they use to feed.
"Believe it or not those little arms are covered on all sides with tiny mouthlettes," she said.
"Thysanostoma doesn't have one mouth like other jellyfish, it has thousands of tiny microscopic mouths and each of those mouths will eat as much plankton as it can catch."
Ms Gershwin had trouble containing her excitement when she first saw the photos.
"To see one in purple, come on, how cool is that," she said.
"They're usually kind of brownie-beige sort of.
"This is technicolor."
SEA Life Mooloolaba and Ms Gershwin are analysing the jellyfish.

ABC Sunshine Coast

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New Underwater Volcano Discovered in Hawaii

The sprawling chain of Hawaiian volcanoes just added another underwater branch.  Image: Pillow lavas at Ka'ena volcano, a type of lava that only forms underwater.  © University of Hawaii at Manoa

The discovery means Oahu once towered above the ocean with three volcanic peaks, the researchers said. Until now, scientists thought Oahu was built by two volcanoes - Wai'anae on the west and Ko'olau on the east.

"I think we may very well have had three active volcanoes in the Oahu region," said lead study author John Sinton, a geologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The new volcano, named Ka'ena, was born in the deep underwater channel south of Kauai about 5 million years ago, according to the study, published May 2 in the Geological Society of America Bulletin. Sometime later, Wai'anae rose on Ka'ena's flanks and therefore breached the sea first, breaking through the waves 3.9 million years ago. The researchers think Ko'olau surfaced after that, about 3 million years ago.

Ka'ena volcano is about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) high, but only reached about 3,000 feet above sea level, Sinton said. As Oahu's first-born, Ka'ena is the shortest of the three volcanoes because it had to grow farthest from the seafloor to the ocean surface. But the researchers know Ka'ena was once an island peak, because the underwater mountain is capped by lavas with textures that only form in air. With a remotely operated vehicle, the researchers also spied a sandy beach strewn with shark teeth.

Oahu's volcanoes died out about 2 million years ago, and like all of Hawaii's islands, their massive bulk is slowly sinking, hiding Ka'ena beneath the sea.

Disappearing islands

The weight of the Hawaiian volcanoes has pressed down the Earth's crust. The flexing resembles a person standing on a trampoline, causing the springy surface to sag.

"The first ones, because they form in deep water, they kind of escape notice," Sinton said. "We like to think we know how many Hawaiian volcanoes there are, but what we know about what's underwater is a huge area of ignorance," he told Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.

Map showing the three volcanoes now thought to make up Oahu, Hawaii. From oldest to youngest these are the Ka‘ena, Wai‘anae, and Ko‘olau Volcanoes. Upper panel: bold dashed lines delineate possible rift zones of the three volcanoes; also shown are the major landslide deposits around O‘ahu. The lower panel shows how the three volcanic edifices overlap.
Credit: University of Hawaii at Manoa

. View full size image

 Though scientists have noted Ka'ena volcano's massive underwater bulk for decades, it took several underwater expeditions to confirm geologists' suspicions that it was separate from Wai'anae.

Long, shallow ridges (Ka'ena Ridge and Wai'anaa) that stretch to the northwest mark the topography offshore of Oahu. When the U.S. Navy mapped the seafloor during World War II, scientists thought the ridges were extensions of Wai'anae volcano.

"Once better maps started to appear, the idea that there might be an earlier volcano came to our minds," Sinton said. "It was obvious this was something unusual."

Sinton and his colleagues distinguished the volcanoes with analysis of rock samples and detailed mapping of the seafloor's bumps and saddles. The lava at each volcano is chemically distinct, with different ages; gravity surveys suggest the different groups of lava had unique sources.

The new volcano fills a puzzling gap between Oahu and its nearest neighbor, the island of Kauai. Except for these two islands, volcanoes in the Hawaiian chain are spaced within 20 to 40 miles (32 to 64 kilometers) of their older neighbor. But Wai'anae volcano was 90 miles (145 km) from Kauai. Ka'ena volcano fixes the chain's missing link.

The Hawaiian Islands are hotspot volcanoes, a chain formed as the Pacific plate moves over a plume of hot magma in the Earth's mantle. As the plate shifts, new volcanoes appear.

But there's one mystery Ka'ena volcano can't solve. Despite an intense search, the research team never found the source of an enigmatic underwater eruption in 1956 offshore of Oahu, Sinton said. However, the scientists did find young lava fields that erupted as recently as 300,000 to 400,000 years ago on the south side of Ka'ena Ridge.

The lava fields show eruptions are possible near the region of the mysterious 1956 event, the study concludes. "The best I can say is it's unconfirmed," Sinton said.

Live Science 

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Asphalt volcano in the Gulf of Mexico

Scientists searching for what they thought to be a shipwreck found something entirely unexpected in the Gulf of Mexico instead.
“It looked like a shipwreck,” Thomas Heathman, a Texas A&M-Galveston marine biology student, told KHOU-TV of the image that was first seen on an acoustic survey. “And then once we get down there, we see this structure that we’ve never seen before. Never seen anything like it in the northern Gulf of Mexico.”
A robotic vehicle tethered to the Okeanos Explorer, a vessel owned by the National and Atmospheric Administration, was on its 12th dive last week as part of the expedition in the Gulf. At a depth of more than 1,900 meters, the robot picked up images of bacterial mats, bamboo corals, shrimp and other sea life.  
Approaching the area of the suspected shipwreck though, the researchers saw not a man-made object but a natural phenomenon, according to NOAA’s dive report.

It was a “flower-like extrusion” created by an asphalt volcano. Nicknamed the “tar lily,” NOAA said it is the first of its kind spotted in the Gulf.
“Once we got up to it, we were thinking, ‘This is not a ship.’ It was an ‘oh my gosh’ moment,” Heatherton told the Houston Chronicle.
NOAA described each “petal” as being a tar extrusion that was curved and layered as a result of asphalt rising and from the sea floor and coming into contact with the water.
Life was abundant on both of the tar lilies the team found, and no bubbles indicating gas or oil were observe coming from the structures. They were estimated to be hundreds if not thousands of years old.

While the discovery of the tar lilies was exciting, the team was hoping they had found the fourth shipwreck after investigations have already been conducted on three related sunken ships in what’s called the Monterrey Wreck area. According to KHOU, the thought is that a pirate ship in the early 19th century told by a government to attack the ships from other countries. Previous expeditions of the wrecks have brought back artifacts and more are planned for the future.
All in all, Texas A&M biology professor Gilbert Rowe told the Chronicle that this latest discovery highlights yet again how “we know more about the moon than we know about the deep oceans.”
See more of the tar lilies in NOAA’s dive video on its website.

The Blaze 

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Stunned fisherman catches wobbly shrimp-like creature

A fisherman from New Zealand was left baffled when he caught this see-through shrimp-like creature swimming near the surface of the ocean.
Stewart Fraser was fishing with sons Conaugh and Finn 43 miles north off the North Island's Karikari Peninsula when he spotted the translucent 'shrimp' floating near the top of the water.
Mr Fraser said: 'I was in two minds whether to haul it in, but curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a closer look.

'It felt scaly and was quite firm, almost jelly like, and you couldn't see anything inside aside from this orange little blob inside it.The photo baffled Mr Fraser and all of his fisherman friends, who are still none more the wise as to what the creature could have been.

Mr Fraser said: 'We have no idea what it could have been but it was quite something and I'd never seen anything like it before.'However, Deborah Cracknell, research lead from the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, told MailOnline she believes the creature is a Salpa maggiore (Salpa maxima).
Paul Cox, director of conservation and communication at the National Marine Aquarium, said: 'Little is known about these salps, however, they are often found in colder seas, with the most abundant concentration found in the Southern Ocean.
'The salp is barrel-shaped and moves by contracting, pumping water through its gelatinous body.
'It strains the water through its internal feeding filters, feeding on phytoplankton from the upper sunlit layer of the ocean.
'They have an interesting life-cycle with alternate generations existing as solitary individuals or groups forming long chains.
'In common with other defenceless animals that occupy open water - jellies and hydroids for example - the translucence presumably provides some protection from predation. Being see-through is a pretty good camouflage in water.'

WHAT IS A SALPA MAGGIORE?

One theory to explain the mysterious fish is that it could be a salpa maggiore - a kind of marine invertebrate.
Salps, as they are more commonly known, are found in both equatorial and cold seas, so the waters around New Zealand's Karikari Peninsula would be more than suitable for the translucent sea creature.
They are spotted swimming alone just as often as they are seen in long, string-like colonies, and move by pumping water through their gelatinous bodies. 
As a harmless creature that feeds only on plankton, a salp's see-through body is believed to be designed to avoid it being spotted by predators when floating near the surface.
One remarkable species survival technique is the ability to create a clone of itself when food is abundant, which then grow at the fastest rate of any multicellular creature.

Daily Mail

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Tsunami Record Discovered in Indonesia Cave

A village near the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, lays in ruin on January 2, 2005, after the tsunami that struck South East Asia.

Philip A. McDaniel/CNP/Corbis

A cave on the Indonesian island of Sumatra is providing a "stunning" record of Indian Ocean tsunamis over thousands of years.

Paleo-oceanographers say layers of tsunami-borne sediments found in the cave in northwest Sumatra suggest the biggest destructive waves do not occur at set intervals -- meaning communities in the area should be prepared at all times for a tsunami.

"It's something that communities need to know," research team leader Charles Rubin told AFP, adding that the team wanted to "promote safety of coastal communities".
Professor Rubin and other researchers from a Singapore institute were working with scientists from an Indonesian university when they discovered the cave, south of Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province.
A quake-triggered tsunami devastated Aceh and areas across the Indian Ocean in 2004, leaving some 170,000 people dead in the province alone.
Inside the cave the researchers found layers of sandy sediment, which had been washed in by tsunamis thousands of years previously, Rubin said.
The layers, which contained small fossils from the seabed, were well-preserved and separated by droppings deposited by bats in the cave, he added.
"This is a beautiful, stunning record of tsunamis that you just don't have very often," Rubin said.

PHOTOS: Changing Face of Earth in 2013

Only huge tsunamis and storm surges can get into the cave, which has a raised entrance -- and afterwards the sediment is protected inside from erosion by wind or water.
Rubin said the scientists dated the layers and believe they show that between 2,800 and 3,300 years ago, some four to five tsunamis battered the area.
Before the 2004 tsunami, it had been hundreds of years since such a huge destructive wave had hit Aceh, the scientist said.
But he said the new discovery suggests that tsunamis are not evenly spaced through time, which should provide food for thought for those involved in policy and planning in the region.
"These don't happen like clockwork, they have variations in time and variations in size," he said.
Rubin works at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, an institute that forms part of Nanyang Technological University.
Scientists from the institute were working with researchers from Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh.

Discovery News

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Unbelievable Close-Up Photos Of Snowflakes

More than a few artists have proved that macrophotography has merits beyond simply magnifying very small things. It can also capture aesthetically beautiful images lurking beyond our usual visual perception, whether they're hiding inside a meteorite or on the wing of a dragonfly... or inside falling snow.

Check out these marvelous images

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Black Iceberg image goes viral

This photo of a Black Iceberg was posted on January 4, 2013, on Reddit and went viral with more than 1.17 million views in less than 48 hours. (Photo: Reddit)

An amazingly ominous picture of a black iceberg on social media platform Reddit.com is creating quite a stir among online denizens as it went viral within hours of it being published on January 4, 2013.
The iceberg stands in sharp contrast to another whitish iceberg in the photo which seems to have been taken during the day. The image has thus far been viewed some 1.17 million times, got more than 20,000 ‘up votes’ and, strangely, another 17,000 ‘down votes’, with more than 1,200 people commenting on the Reddit post.
According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, most icebergs are white except along freshly calved ice cliffs, which tend to appear blue. “Others may appear green, brown or black, or combinations of these colours,” it says.
“The various colorations are caused by differences in density, air-bubble content and impurities,” the encyclopedia explains. “For example, black ice is of high density and bubble free; dark layers indicate the presence of rock materials derived from the base of the parent glacier. Occasionally, rocks may be found on the original upper surface of the iceberg. As the iceberg melts, these materials precipitate into marine or lake sediments.”
The Black Iceberg picture, as it is being referred to online, was posted by Reddit user Rundboll, who did not mention where this picture was taken although other users have been speculating that the image must have been clicked somewhere in New Zealand.
Black icebergs are indeed scarcer than white icebergs, but the Tasman Glacier Lake in New Zealand is known as the ‘home of the black icebergs’.

Emirates 24/7 

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Stunning 50ft blue ice monolith captured in the Antarctic

Hard work: Mr Travouillon travelled to the Antarctic while studying for his PhD from the Australian university of New South Wales, between 2001-2004

At first glance these beautiful images from the Antarctic appear to show 50-ft tall waves that have been instantly frozen as they break.
Some people have posted the pictures online, taken by scientist Tony Travouillon at Dumont D'Urville, with a description claiming they are a tsunami wave which was frozen.
But although email chains and internet forums back this claim up, what is really pictured is the natural phenomenon of blue ice.

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13th Century Volcano caused mass deaths in London’s East End

Archaeoligists evacuated skelelons in Spitalfields between 1998 and 2005

Archeologists who discovered thousands of skeletons in medieval mass graves in London’s East End believe many were the victims of a 13th Century volcanic eruption on the other side of the world.
The skeletons were uncovered next to Spitalfields Market when the new Spital Square development was started 20 years ago.
Experts believed for years they were plague victims—but radiocarbon dating didn’t add up.
Now a 10-year ecological investigation by the Museum of London has discovered the likely cause to be a volcano which caused world temperatures to cool and crops to fail, resulting in mass starvation.

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Bowhead Whales Jam Like Hendrix for Months

Bowhead whales are now thought to have song repertoires rivaling those of birds, except the tunes sound more like psychedelic Jimi Hendrix guitar licks than avian tweets.


Listen and see what you think:
Bowhead Whale Song #1
Bowhead Whale Song #2

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'Grand Canyon' under Antarctica tied to ice loss, researchers report

The edge of the Ferrigno Ice Stream is seen from a plane. A valley below the stream as well as an offshore channel appear to be allowing relatively warmer sea water to eat away at the ice from below.

A newly discovered Antarctica valley buried by ice and as deep as the Grand Canyon could be contributing to rising sea levels, scientists reported Thursday.
The ancient topography is such that relatively warm sea water could be eating away at the ice edge -- and a question for future research is whether that process is happening elsewhere along Antarctica's coastal rift valleys.

A few other ice-covered valleys have been found but the geology of this one, discoverer Rob Bingham told NBC News, shows that "the areas that are most vulnerable (to ice loss) coincide with areas of ancient rifting."

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Mysterious Geologic Structure Seen from Space

Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers snapped this photo of a lava crater in Mauritania from the International Space Station.
Credit: ESA/NASA

A huge, copper-toned formation in West Africa dominates a mesmerizing photo taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.
Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers snapped this hypnotic image of the so-called Richat structure in Mauritania, as the space station flew over the Sahara Desert on the Atlantic Coast of West Africa. Erosion of the various rock layers created the ring-like features that make up the sprawling structure, but the origin of the Richat structure remains somewhat mysterious, geologists have said.

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Meteorites may be remnants of destroyed dwarf planet

Two rocks found together in Antarctica are chunks of a dwarf planet that was smashed apart early in the solar system's history, detailed studies suggest. Other remnants of the proto-world may still be floating around in the asteroid belt, and might be identifiable by the spectrum of the sunlight they reflect.

In the solar system's first few tens of millions of years, collisions between rocky objects and the decay of radioactive isotopes melted the interiors of large objects. Magma oceans – perhaps hundreds of kilometres deep – lapped over the Moon, the Earth, and other large bodies, allowing dense material to settle towards their centres in a process called differentiation.

The two meteorite pieces, called GRA 06128 and GRA 06129 after the Graves Nunataks area of Antarctica where they were found together in 2006, show evidence of such differentiation – which suggests they came from a massive body.

Image Above: A meteorite found in Antarctica called GRA 06129 may have come from a large body that was blasted apart in a collision early in the solar system (Image: NASA)

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