All the news on the Earth's largest environment.

This is the second of a two-part post. In the first installment, Kim presented alternatives to this project. This installment is a collaboration between Kim and Miriam. Dr. Kim Martini is a physical ...

When I first learned about rhizocephalan barnacles I lost my appetite. I was taking a parasitology course, and even though I’d developed a thick skin, something about this insidious creature deeply ...

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 ...

Practically nothing was known about the biology of whale sharks up until about 15 years ago. Since that time there has been a veritable explosion of interest in the world’s largest fish. As we have ...

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 ...

In case it ever comes up in a Jeopardy Daily Double question, the fossil record does not contain many hermit crab fossils. That’s right, those cute little beasties, so abundant you can buy them in ...

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, ...

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, despite what cryptozoologists may be telling you. Plesiosaurs, like mermaids, Megalodon, and a representative democracy, don’t really exist anymore, ...

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 ...

This oddly plumaged penguin appeared in my Antarctic & Arctic Data Consortium 2015 calendar (yes, I have a data calendar) and I needed to know…why on earth does this penguin have a fauxhawk? Image ...

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 ...