The Fossil Record

Transparent fish caught on tape!

New kid in town

I hope I can visit California's Monterey Bay Aquarium in person someday. But in the meantime, I'm happy poking around their fantastic website. The Monterey folks have done a great deal of important work in marine conservation and research.

And right now, they've got...

*drumroll please*

...a baby GREAT WHITE SHARK living there (gasp!!!), waiting to be studied, tagged and released back into the wild as part of the Aquarium's white shark field project.

He's a little guy--at 4 feet 9 inches long and weighing 67 pounds--who was rescued by the Aquarium after he had gotten caught accidently in a commercial fishing net. He is the third young shark to have been housed by the Aquarium, and the other two were both tagged and returned to the wild. The white shark population has been in steady decline worldwide, so the research being done on them could prove invaluable in helping to keep this top predator off the endangered list.

Since sharks are my all-time favorite animals (next to my dog--I have to say that or he gets very jealous), I'm just itching to see a Great White in person. I wonder how long it takes to drive from here to California...

For now, I'll just have to try and catch him on the Aquarium's Outer Bay Cam.

Whale of a life

Scientists have more of an idea of what the lifespan of one of our planet's most majestic endangered creatures may be, thanks to this bowhead whale. But I wonder how much longer he might have lived if he had not been hunted? Another bowhead examined in 1999 holds the record for longest-lived vertebrate; she was estimated to be 211 years old. That means this recently caught bowhead was probably smack dab in the prime of his life expectancy.

From Associated Press and the New York Times

A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it had survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3.5-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale’s age, estimated at 115 to 130 years.

“No other finding has been this precise,” said John Bockstoce, from the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts. The bomb lance fragment, lodged in a bone between the whale’s neck and shoulder blade, was probably made in New Bedford, Mr. Bockstoce said. It was probably shot from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890.

illustration by David G. Stanton

Nessie caught on tape?

Sea monster? School of fish? Blob of seaweed? Hoax? Some people think she's a plesiosaur, an ancient swimming reptile trapped in Scotland's famous Loch Ness during the last ice age.

But whatever the legend of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, turns out to be, I'm sure there will be many more chapters to her story before we reach the end.

This video, shot last week by lab technician Gordon Holmes, is the newest evidence in the ongoing mystery.

Gordon shot the video while out researching the lake. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45 feet long, moving fairly fast in the water," he said.

Sightings of Nessie date all the way back to the year 546 A. D.

Scientists will begin analyzing the video to see if they can figure out what it shows. In the meantime, lots of imaginations will be dazzled by the possibilities!

If you want to keep up with all sightings and news of Nessie, she has an official website.

'Planet Earth' is the new star

Photo by David Shale

There were so many interesting creatures on the Discovery Channnel's amazing new show, "Planet Earth," but one of my favorites is this little guy, Grimpoteuthis, or the "Dumbo octopus." He is what's known as a benthic mollusk, named after the benthic zone of the ocean, which is closest to the ocean floor. The pelagic zone, on the other hand, refers to the area of the ocean above the benthic zone. The zones are further broken up into subzones, depending on how much light reaches a certain area of the ocean below the surface.

Of course, the ocean floor doesn't get much light, especially at a depth of about 400 meters (about 150 feet) where the Dumbo octopus lives, so life there is darkly different than it is on coral reefs or more shallow areas where plant life can grow. "Dumbo," named for his ears that make him resemble the Disney elephant, hovers around over the sea bed by using those ears as fins or his arms as propellers to swim around with, searching for worms, snails and other slimy creatures to munch on.

The Dumbo octopus doesn't get very big--only about eight inches long--but he sure makes a big impression!

By the way, if you missed "Planet Earth," you can watch some awesome video clips of the episodes by going to the Discovery Channel Planet Earth page.

A really big fish story

Well, OK, squid aren't really fish at all. They're mollusks, like snails, clams and octopus, which means they have soft, squishy bodies that are divided into distinct parts.

We've all seen average-sized squid. Then there are giant squid. But the legendary colossal squid in this short slideshow is even bigger than a giant squid. It was caught in January on a New Zealand deep sea fishing trip in the Antarctic Sea. On a calm and quiet day, the fisherman were waiting for something to take their bait when the sea got very active. Suddenly, they saw a 33 foot-long, half-ton sea monster wrapped around one of the lines. “It came up right alongside us. Everyone was yelling and screaming, " says John Bennett, the captain of the ship.

The squid turned out to be the largest one ever captured! It was so big, its body was about as big around as a tractor tire. But even though it was enormous, the squid surprised the fishermen by being very non-aggressive when it was out of the water. I guess sometimes monsters aren't really so mean after all.

You can read the story of the sea giant's capture in the current issue of Newsweek.

And you can hang around in the Smithsonian Institution's online exhibit, In Search of the Giant Squid to learn more about these incredible creatures.

Another rare shark!

This time, it's a goblin shark who came up from the ocean depths to check out what's going on up on the surface. The approximately four-foot long little monster was caught alive off the coast of Japan and moved to the Tokyo Sea Life Park, where scientists observed it before it died.

The goblin shark is adapted to life in very deep water, where sunlight does not reach. The dark and cold habitat may explain the shark's ghostly pink, almost translucent appearance. They also have unusually large livers, which account for 25% of their total body mass. Their elongated snouts, which may be used as electrical sensory devices, sit on top of jaws that can protrude out to catch deep sea creatures like squid, crabs, and fishes.

Goblin sharks have been around for about 100 million years. The first recorded goblin shark was caught in Japan by fisherman in 1897. They called the beast "tenguzame," which means "goblin."

I don't think he looks so scary when his jaws aren't pushed out. He looks pretty peaceful in this video, swimming around with the other aquarium fishes and wondering what all those bright lights are.

Giant Turtle Spotted!

According to the Bay of Plenty Times, a rare sea turtle the size of a dining room table has been caught on camera off the Western Bay coast in New Zealand by a couple who were out fishing.

Gay and Neil Magnus spotted a large floating object in the water and drove their boat over for a closer look. When they reached the massive object, they were amazed to realize that it was a sea turtle approximately six feet long.

"We've seen lots of smaller turtles but this was massive," said Mrs. Magnus.

Mr. Magnus said the turtle was feeding on roe, or large clusters of fish eggs. Though turtles usually move away from humans, this one stuck around.

"Normally what happens is that you get a quick look at them and then they dive. But this one was protecting its roe and it wasn't going anywhere," he said.

Mr. and Mrs. Magnus think the turtle was a rare leatherback, an endangered species named for the leathery skin that covers a series of bony plates on its back. Though leatherbacks usually like the warmer waters of Florida, Sri Lanka, Malaysia or South America, they have been known to show up in New Zealand once in a while.

For more information about leatherback turtles and how to help them, go to The Leatherback Trust.

Photo by Jayne Herbert

News of the Weird

Photo from Getty Images

The frilled shark is one of the rarest (or most rarely seen) of all shark species. Sometimes called "a living fossil" because of its resemblance to early sharks of the Paleozoic era, this strange-looking beast usually swims deep in the ocean, but occasionally is spotted near the surface, perhaps when ill or injured.

That's what may have happened, says a park official, on Sunday of this week when a fisherman saw about a five-foot long frilled shark in Japan before it was transferred to a marine park there. The shark lived in the park for a few hours and was photographed before it unfortunately died.

The frilled shark's jaws contain about 300 small teeth which he uses to eat squid, fishes and maybe even other sharks. He has big cloudy-looking eyes, an eel-like body and a collar of ruffles around his six large pairs of gill slits.

Sharks are such amazing and beautiful animals!

Another Monster from the Past

Here's a photo I took of my all-time favorite fossil:

I love that Megalodon shark tooth so much. My very favorite prehistoric animal! That tooth is bigger than my hand. Hard to believe that such a giant was once swimming around in our oceans. Maybe one still lurks out there somewhere. Megalodon probably looked exactly like its modern relative, the great white shark, but could grow up to about 50 feet long (maybe even bigger!). That's a lotta shark.

Sharks are my all-time favorite animal. Well...next to my dog, I should say.