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photos by lloyd meudell (instagram) along the southern coast of new south wales. as lloyd, who’s surfed the area for years before picking up a camera, explains, “when the tide is high, the water comes in and it breaks in front of cliffs, explodes into the air and creeps over the sand.” keeping his photographic techniques close to his chest, lloyd is uniquely able to capture the beauty of sea foam in both form and motion.
(via monere-lluvia)
Source: nubbsgalore
Unusually for salamanders, hellbenders engage in external fertilisation. Male hellbenders will seek out the perfect flat rock under which to dig a nesting burrow, and will defend it viciously from other males. When a female approaches, the male will coax her inside to lay her eggs, which he will then fertilize. A single female can lay up to 200 eggs, connected by five cords, and one male’s burrow can contain almost 2000 eggs at once. The male will guard the eggs in the two or three months it takes them to hatch, standing over them and rocking his body and undulating his skin folds to keep water flowing over his clutch, keeping them oxygenated. When the larvae hatch, they are all but limbless and subsist on a large yolk sack for their first few months of life.
Sadly, the larvae have little chance of making it to adulthood. Aside from the adult hellbenders’ tendency towards cannibalism, hellbender larvae are particularly vulnerable to pollution and rising silt levels. Some zoos, such as the Toledo Zoo, are now raising hellbenders until they are about a year old before releasing them to the wild, greatly increasing their chance of survival.
(via moreanimalia)
Source: zsl-edge-of-existence
Hoshizuna no Hama is a beach located on the remote island of Iriomote in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. The name roughly translates to “star sand beach” and was named aptly, due to the star shaped sand which calls this beach home. One-celled organisms called baclogypsina sphaerulata have pointed arms which are used to help them move. The other shell of these organisms is made from calcium carbonate and when they die, they leave their exoskeletons behind which make up this beach.
Source: congenitaldisease
Some Antarctic and deep-sea octopuses.
Clockwise from top left:
Pareledone charcoti (credit: L. Allcock)
Thaumeledone gunteri (credit: I. Everson)
Adelieledone polymorpha (credit: L. Allcock)
Megaledone setebos (credit: M. Rauschert)
Some specimens from the genus Pareledone, which are found in the Antarctic.
Clockwise from top left: Pareledone felix, Pareledone serperastrata, Pareledone aequipapillae, Pareledone aurata, Pareledone cornuta, Pareledone charcoti, Pareledone albimaculata, Pareledone panchroma.
[Images: Mike Vecchione, Uwe Piatkowski, Louise Allcock]
!!! @oceank1ngSea Angel (gymnosomata)
Sea angels are a part of the gastropod (sea slug) clade. Instead of having a sticky foot they have winglike appendages, and the entire shell is lost. The small, gelatinous creatures get to be about 5cm long on average. The larger, polar versions synthesize a defensive metabolite called pteroenone to ward off predators. Other creatures take advantage of this and bring sea angels with them to ward off other predators. Sea angels are hermaphroditic, fertilizing internally, and release egg masses to float in the open ocean until they hatch. The first three pictures are sea angels as they normally appear, the bottom two pictures are sea angels when feeding.
(via moreanimalia)
Source: yeens-human
I got to visit my girlfriend after my volunteer work today
This juvenile glass squid (Bathothauma lyromma) haunts the waters with stalked, bulbous eyes and two short arms. Like many glass squids, members of this species contain light-emitting organs on their lower surfaces, which are used to fool predators and obscure the silhouette of their eyes.
Photo: Solvin Zankl
Hellbenders are normally solitary animals with a fixed home range. Once a hellbender has established a den, it will rarely leave it except to hunt or to find a mate. The territories of two animals may overlap, but the two hellbenders are never found in the same place at the same time; should they meet by chance, they will challenge each other. A larger animal will chase a smaller one away, but two equally matched hellbenders will engage in a vicious fight (see bottom image). And should one hellbender kill the other, they are not above cannibalism.
(via moreanimalia)
Source: zsl-edge-of-existence
