Spooky Sea Creatures

“Alright then, keep your sea crits.”

It’s been two weeks now since I falsely stated that I would do a post about deep-sea animals in one week, but I’m finally getting around to it. There isn’t some sort of deep-seated (or perhaps DEEP-SEAted) reason why I like creepy ocean critters, I just think they look cool. I’ve had a fascination with spooky things since I was little, with Halloween always being one of my favorite holidays. That’s evolved into an interest in the macabre and probably one of the reasons why I consider myself a horror writer today. My taste for weird-looking fish are just an extension of that, I guess. And since the wackiest animals live at the bottom of the ocean, and since the bottom of the ocean is so different than everywhere else, looking at these things is the closest we’re going to get to seeing aliens in our lifetime (probably).

Something about them is calming, too. Watching videos of these weird things floating around, slowly drifting back and forth in the currents, it’s quite peaceful. You can watch the ones about attacks, too, but those aren’t as nice. It’s also so interesting from a scientific perspective since all these creatures live in one of the harshest environments on planet earth, and each has adapted to survive there in unique ways. I turn to these videos when I’m sad, tired, high, or all of the above, and it’s a great time. Some people find them frightening, or weird, or grotesque, but I think they’re beautiful. Sort of, anyway. Yes, they can be frightening, and the thought of floating down there in the darkness, alone, while unknown beasts drift towards you, is a terrifying idea. That’s why I also like to listen to scary stories about deep sea creatures when I run, or debunked myths.

But the real thing is always better than the story. Says the fiction writer, but eh, whatever, here’s some neat fish that I like to watch when I’m sad.

Megamouth Shark (Megachasma pelagios)

Ah yes, one of those weirdo sharks that doesn’t eat other fish, but instead filter-feeds on plankton by swimming real slow with their mouths wide open, not unlike I did in high school. These sharks are so rare that only about 100 specimens have either been caught or sighted, even though they can get to be close to 18 feet long. They tend to live in the twilight zone of the ocean, which is not where Rod Serling exists but it actually a region of the ocean where the light doesn’t quite reach. It isn’t completely dark, per se, but it’s pretty dark. And also pretty cold, and under a lot of pressure. The Megamouth shark just kind of deals with it, though, floating there like a big bag. I don’t really have a whole lot else to say about them; I just think they’re cool and look stupid.

Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus)

Hey, look, it’s one of the other filter-feeding sharks, besides the Megamouth and the Whale Shark! And while everyone knows that the whale shark is the largest shark and largest fish, did you know that the basking shark is the second-largest, with the largest recorded specimen being 12 meters, or almost 40 fucking feet long? That’s a big-ass shark. Good thing they only eat plankton and are generally pretty slow-moving, huh? We don’t really need to worry about them attacking anybody. Not that they could do much damage, anyway. They’re kind of the old men of the sea, and the worst they could do is try and gum you to death. I always thought they looked a little bit like big, ugly dogs.

Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus)

There are actually a lot of similarities between the ocean depths and arctic waters; namely, the bitter cold and lack of nutrients. That’s why, I guess, arctic sharks tend also to be able to swim pretty deep. Like this one, which is just kind of dumpy-looking and is probably older, evolutionarily-speaking, than a lot of other moderns animals today. And physically older, too, as a specimen was dated to be around 400 years old, give or take one-hundred years, making it the longest-lived vertebrate species of any kind. That’s so old, that individual shark is older than the United States Constitution. Our country has been beat out by a shark.

Fun fact about Greenland sharks, they’re one of the slowest-moving sharks species, barely swimming as they drift through the waters. However, they aren’t plankton-eaters like the other two sharks up there; these ones are predators, just the same as a Great White Shark (and growing to a similar size, at 20 feet long). We’ve never seen them actively hunting, however, so we don’t really know how fast they can move when they’re in a rush. Which is, frankly, a terrifying thought. Oh, and they’re probably related to whatever this shark was, which if its estimates are accurate, puts it at close to 60 feet long, or longer than any other shark ever caught. That’s just wild to me.

Final fun fact about sleeper sharks: a small relatively of the Greenland Shark, the Frog Shark, is one of the rarest sharks that we know to exist; less than a dozen specimens have been captured. But what’s really crazy to me about the frog shark is that we don’t have any pictures of it. Not a one. Not that I could find, anyway. Just think about that. We know it’s there, but we don’t know what it looks like. We barely know anything about it. And there are a couple other shark species like this, too; we just don’t have pictures of them. Just goes to show how massive the ocean is; we keep discovering new species, but who knows if we’ll ever see them again?

Dragonfish (family Stomiidae)

Alright, enough about sharks. These fuckers keep showing up whenever I look at pictures of creepy deep-sea fish, and for good reason. Look at that face. It’s horrible. It’s creepy and toothy. It’s incredible. There’s a whole bunch of different species of them and their relatives, and they’re all insane. Some of them have detachable jaws. Most of them are bioluminescent. Sometimes their teeth are transparent. A few have a second set of teeth inside their mouth, like the Alien in Alien. Even though most of the species of this fish are pretty small, not getting more than a foot long, I wouldn’t want to meet them in person. I’m content to watch a video of them as they dart away from submarines. They’re just so weird to look at.

Also, I’m pretty sure that the fish this guy is describing is some sort of dragonfish.

Oarfish (family Regalicidae)

The Oarfish is the OG of weird sea creatures, and also one of the best fish to catch in Animal Crossing. Sometimes when they’re sick or dying they come to the surface during the daytime, and they’re probably one of the many inspirations for sea serpents because, well, look at that fucker. If you were some fisherman in the 1700’s and you ran across that thing, you’d probably believe in monsters, too. Especially since they can get to be close to 20 feet long, with some reports of them getting even longer. I always think their faces are kind of horse-like.

Siphonophores (order Siphonophorae)

Siphonophores are really weird to talk about because there are so many variations of them, and they all look like lovecraftian nightmares. And what’s worse (or better, depending on your perspective), is that each “individual” siphonophore is actually made up of millions of other little individual creatures. They’re colonial organizations, see, which means that each “cell” of the animal can live independently of the main unit. This should be compared to other animals, where if you cut them into little pieces, they die. In theory, then, these things have no upper limit on size; in fact, the longest animal living may be a Siphonophore. Add on to that the fact that some of them are venomous enough to kill a human (the Portuguese Man-o-war is one such example), and they’re a veritable sea monster, in the best possible sense.

Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux)

Ah, yes, the giant squid. We’ve been searching for them for generations, following reported sightings for years and trailing after the washed-up corpses on beaches. Then, finally, we got footage of a live one in the early 2000’s. They aren’t actually as big as you’d think, though; most of their 30 to 33 feet maximum length comes from their tentacles, but you still wouldn’t want to mess with them, since they get into fights with sperm whales. The only one bigger is the Colossal Squid, but that’s only because they weigh more. But either way, they’re both incredibly intelligent, highly elusive, and utterly beautiful. While my dreams of finding squids over one-hundred feet long are entirely just that, dreams, the real ones, that really do exist, are still fascinating.

I used to have this game called Endless Ocean, where you just go diving and look at fish, and I always liked to go look for the giant squid at the bottom of the game’s trench, but I was always too scared when the game’s creepy music started to play. So I did the only thing I could, and use the game’s convenient feature to play your own music, directly from your Wii. Of course, the only song we had uploaded to our Wii was, for whatever unfathomable reason, “All Star” by Smash Mouth. So I regularly descended to the depths of a virtual ocean to the sounds of the Shrek soundtrack. It is impossible for me to not associate giant squid with Smash Mouth, forevermore.

Reaper Leviathan (not a real fish)

Along with watching videos of deep sea creatures, I also like to play video games about them. The best game about real fish is, of course, the Endless Ocean game that I mentioned earlier. But hands down, the best game about fake fish is Subnautica. It’s a spooky survival game about living on an alien planet post-crash, and it has some of the best creature design in any video game, ever. The Reaper Leviathan, pictured above, is definitely one of the creepiest ones. I hate them, so, so much. They always scare me, and at times I just have to stop playing because they stress me out so much. But I’d be lying if I said they weren’t fascinating; I love watching them, and sometimes I like to just mess with them. Though that’s harder said than done.

Japanese Spider Crab (Macrocheira kaempferi)

How big do you think that crab is? Pretty big, right? What if I told you its legs can stretch up to 12 feet across? That’s definitely pretty big. But they’re also just so weird to look at. Look at those long, thin arms! Like a robot! And that creepy basketball body that they have! So strange. I’ve been lucky enough to see a couple of them live, as the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has a pair. They’re weird to look at and even weirder to interact with. At least, I would imagine, as I’ve never had any excuse to swim with one. But one day, maybe I will. I sure hope I do.

Basket Star (order Euryalida)

Did I say the Siphonophore was the closest thing to an eldritch monstrosity? Sorry, I actually meant the Basket Star. As weird as that picture is, and as far from the regular starfish as you’d expect, you really have to see it move to get the full effect. It’s unnerving, each arm seems to have a mind of its own, and it keeps twisting and turning and untwisting and unturning until you can’t tell where the starfish ends and the nightmares begin. Or maybe it just wants a hug.

Coelacanth (order Coelacanthiformes)

Coelacanth (pronounced “see-la-canth” for some dumb reason) aren’t actually that weird-looking, as far as fish go, especially when you get to the depth of the ocean that they normally live at. But they’re cool because of what they represent in science; naturalists had thought they went extinct 66 million years ago, but then, in the 1930’s, they were discovered in the bycatch of a local fisherman in South Africa. Suddenly this “living fossil” shows up, and lo and behold there are actually two distinct species of them still surviving, despite disappearing from the fossil record. One of many examples of how we don’t know what’s down there, and we haven’t documented everything. For every question science has an answer to, there are ten more we don’t know about. The coelacanth is a great one we do know the answer to, but didn’t even know it was a question until we dragged it out of the depths.

Goblin Shark (Mitsukurina owstoni)

Surprise, it’s another shark! Who knew there were so many weird sharks out there? Probably because they have such a long evolutionary history, and the Goblin Shark, much like the coelacanth, is also considered to be one of those “living fossils” because nature just can’t seem to get rid of them for 125 million years. Yeah, they’re mostly like other sharks, though; they swim, they smell, they hunt, and oh yeah, their jaws extend out of their head in order to catch prey and sneak past that honker nose of theirs. It’s downright unsettling.

Some Other Weirdos

Well, I don’t know what the point of all this was, but I find it really soothing to look at pictures of these animals that live in some of the most extreme places on earth. From sharks to stars and everything in between, the deep ocean has some of the most varied lifeforms out there. And there are plenty more I haven’t talked about! Like the vampire squid, which doesn’t suck blood but hides in a cape, like Dracula, I guess? And there’s the moray eel, which really does have Alien-like jaws. And there’s also maybe giant 200-foot eels, if the story of the giant Leptocephalus is to be believed? Except probably not because apparently eel larvae can be bigger than the adults. Weird. Oh, and there’s the giant isopods, which are just the rolly-polly pill bugs but a foot long. They’re real cool, too.

I don’t know if I learned anything today, but I got some cool pictures of fish. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

And as a closer, please enjoy this image of a Telescopefish, which looks like the Upside-Down’s version of Animal from The Muppet Show. Thank you, and goodnight.