The Daily Croissant

"Scientists aboard the manned submersible Johnson-Sea-Link collected and observed a bevy of glowing creatures—including sea cucumbers, sea anemones, bamboo corals, and a new species of hermit crab—at depths approaching 3,280 feet (a thousand meters).

As one of the first groups to study bioluminescence among bottom dwellers, the team also examined many of the creatures they'd collected in the laboratory.

Their results suggest that bioluminescence could help deep-sea animals color-code their food, said study co-author Tamara Frank, a marine biologist at Florida's Nova Southeastern Oceanographic Center.

"It's possible that these animals are using the different colors of bioluminescence to decide, Yes I like that, no I'm not interested in that," Frank said.

Another revelation: Deep-sea animals tend to glow green, rather than the typical blues emitted by species living in the water column.

"Down on the seabed, there's a lot of current activity and detritus in the water that may make it difficult to see blue light," she said. "The green light would carry a little bit further.""

"If you repeat the word 'fly' for long enough it sounds like you're saying 'life'. This is of no help to Peter. His answers lie in the brain of a beetle."

"The Eagleman Stag is the 2011 BAFTA award winning Royal College of Art thesis film of director / writer MIKEY PLEASE. It's mostly made out of some strange white stuff, found in the back of a stress cushion. Mikey worked with his brother BENEDICT PLEASE who composed the soundtrack and score, as well as the vocal talents of cult actor DAVID CANN who lends his voice here to Peter Eagleman."

"One of the orbiting windows to our world, an Earth-observing satellite named Envisat, took this image in early December 2011 showing a phytoplankton bloom swirling into a figure-8 in the South Atlantic Ocean about 600 km east of the Falkland Islands. The European Space Agency says that since the phytoplankton are sensitive to environmental changes, it is important to monitor and model them for climate change calculations and to identify potentially harmful blooms. Sensors on the satellites can monitor these algal blooms and make an initial identification of its species and toxicity.

Blooms like this are common in the spring and summer, and it is currently summer in the southern hemisphere.

These microscopic organisms are the base of the marine food chain, and play a huge role in the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the production of oxygen in the oceans. Besides being beautiful to see from space, phytoplankton help regulate the carbon cycle, and are important to the global climate system."

"The photo above shows Brush Creek rushing across a wide beach at low tide near Port Orford, Oregon. It was snapped at the base of Humbug Mountain a little past sunset on November 28, 2011. Venus and the waxing crescent Moon are conspicuous in the twilight sky.

Times and amplitudes of the tides are primarily influenced by the alignment of the Sun and Moon. The combined gravitational pull of these bodies when the Moon is full or new create higher amplitude tides than when the Moon is in other phases. Only nine percent of the Moon was illuminated as shown above, just three days following the onset of the new Moon. A minus 1.2 ft (0.4 m) tide (low tide) was recorded here a few hours after the photo was taken. However, during the new Moon, the low tide was considerably more extreme (referred to as the spring tide), dropping to minus 2.1 ft (0.6 m) with a tidal range of 11.1 ft (3.4 m)."

Photograph by Brian Skerry  

Translucent Shrimp on Anemones, Kingman Reef, 2007