All the news on the Earth's largest environment.

Biologists have a habit of naming things after cool animals. Cars named after comb jellies, internet passwords after giant squid. Most of these names I recognized, but then I saw my friend’s wifi ...

You will never see the Ninja Lanternshark coming, not because it’s dark and elusive, but because you won’t be swimming below 1,000 feet deep off the coast of Central America any time soon. The ...

A comment on Reddit reminded me of a question that I have received many times. The question is always a good one because it stems from knowledge and deductive reasoning. The said question requires one ...

A new species of deep-sea cucumber has over 100 feet in alternating two or three rows. This means of course that when it plays the This Little Piggy nursery rhyme it needs to repeat it 25 times. The ...

Megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon) is the largest shark, at a magnificent maximum length of 18 meters (59 feet), to ever have dwelled in the oceans. We know primarily about Megalodon’s existence ...

Readers of DSN may think they know my favorite organism. Did you guess the giant isopod or did you guess the giant squid? Those beasties are truly fantastic. Large and dwelling in the deep oceans, ...

Most sponges, inspiration for dish cleaners and mess absorbers, feed by filtering water through those many holes and channels. Their scientific name, Porifera, literally means pore bearer. The ...

Tiger sharks are sort of generalist feeders. And by generalist, I mean they will pretty much eat anything. And by everything, I mean everything. On the more natural side of things, tiger sharks eat ...

Like most deep-sea biologists, I have a large collection of decorated Styrofoam cups. A couple dozen line the bookshelf of my office, each displaying a rainbow of Sharpie colors. Each cup is ...

I have only seen a hydrothermal vent once, during Dive 73 aboard the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s Doc Ricketts. Unlike many deep-sea biologists, I have always been more interested in ...

Magnapinna squids are one of the deep-sea more ethereal creatures. Little is known of these squid as very few have ever been captured, although over the last decade with the increased usage of ...