Monday, September 27, 2010

Tuesdays' Show & Tail - Little Sea Squirts!

Time for Tuesdays' Show & Tail!  Please join me and others at the party headquarters!  Sign in on Mr. Linky at our hosts' blog, Angela at West Virginia's Treasures - anyone is welcome to join in and post about a pet (past or present), or any kind of animal on God's Green Earth (or ocean?!?)  Welcome!
These fast-growing sea squirts were found at Larsen A. This can be an indication of a first step towards a biodiversity change after the collapse of the ice shelves. The animals in the foreground are colonized by two crustaceans and a brittle star. Credit: J. Gutt, Alfred-Wegener-Institute.
I've heard it say there is nothing new under the sun.  I don't believe it is absolutely true.  There are many creatures we've never seen, many creatures that have never been confronted with the lens of a camera.  How about this picture, for instance - have you ever beheld anything like it before?
GS at the Great Lakes
Let's go SWIMMING!....or NOT!!!.....Here's more interesting ocean finds!
Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, about 17 miles off Sapelo Island, Georgia, is home to a variety of strange creatures. The Glyceridae, or bloodworms, are ferocious epi- and infaunal polychaetes that prey upon small invertebrates. They are errant burrowers that build galleries of interconnected tubes to aid in catching their prey.
Pillar Coral
Parrot Fish
In the Weddell Sea off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, 10,000 square kilometers of seabed was sealed off from the surface for thousands of years by the 100-m thick ice shelves.  When these ice shelves collapsed in recent years, the area was opened up to species that could not have survived there before.  The earth undergoes constant changing - temperature changes, earth quakes open caverns in the earth - many things happening in different parts of the world.  I'm sure scientists will discover many new and different creatures and organisms as time unfolds on our little planet in the huge universe!

Have a Wondrous Day!

7 comments:

Angela said...

I've never seen anything like that before! God's creatures great and small how wonderful to be able to see them all. I'm sure there are thousands of them that no one has ever seen or if they have seen them they don't realize they haven't been discovered.

Tuesdays' Show & Tail!
Angela

farmlady said...

And this is why I don't believe that global warming is going to be the end of the world. Nature adapts and changes to survive in an ever changing world. The world will abide forever.
Man, on the other hand is going to become extinct if he doesn't quit pushing panic buttons. Mankind is the most at risk because it wants everything to stay the same.
Wonderful photos and I love the two little flotsam and jetsam on the beach. How cute!

Chatty Crone said...

That blows my mind. I didn't know that. I've never seen anything like that. And I live in GA! sandie

ocmist said...

There are so many wonderful animals in this world... and a few pretty ICKY ones. Wouldn't want to be around those bloodworms! They sound really nasty! I love watching TV shows about the ocean and seeing the many different kinds of sea animals there are. Won't ever see them in real life, though, because I don't do water that has sharks in it!!! LOL

ocmist said...

There are so many wonderful animals in this world... and a few pretty ICKY ones. Wouldn't want to be around those bloodworms! They sound really nasty! I love watching TV shows about the ocean and seeing the many different kinds of sea animals there are. Won't ever see them in real life, though, because I don't do water that has sharks in it!!! LOL

Lisa @ Two Bears Farm said...

Sea squirts have an interesting neurological tale to them. I'm trying to remember it. Something like they eat their own brains. And are then just a shell. Strange stuff, those sea squirts.

nanniepannie said...

Nature...AMAZING!!! I would love to enter you contest.