Denizens of Deep Seas and Deep Time Part 3: The Vampire Squid

Its deep velvety black colour, huge red eyes and a webbing of skin connecting eight arms earned this animal the name Vampyroteuthis infernalis, which literally translated means ‘Vampire squid from hell’. It is a small, deep-sea animal, neither an octopus or a squid but a relative and phylogenetic relic or living fossil first described in 1903 by Carl Chun.

The vampire squid is an extremophile, living at depths from 600-900 meters (2,000-3,000 feet). Sunlight does not penetrate the darkness here, pressure is high and oxygen saturation is 3%. But the vampire squid is so beautifully adapted to its environment it manages to do more then just eke out a living, it thrives.

In order to cope with life in the suffocating oceanic, vampire squids have developed several radical adaptations. They have a very low rate of metabolism and instead of using haemoglobin to transport oxygen in their blood they use the more efficient compound haemocyanin, which colours their blood blue.

The vampire squid is covered in light-producing photophores over which the animal has great control. It is capable of producing disorienting flashes of light and can finely tune the size of the photophores as well as the intensity and frequency of flashes. If threatened, instead of ink, the vampire squid ejects a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus from the tips of its arms. This luminous barrage, which can last several minutes dazes predators and allows the animal to escape.

The Vampire squid is the soul extant member of the cephalopod order Vampyromorphida, which shares similarities with both squid and octopuses. Its relationships can be explored further on the Tree of Life website. Like many other deep sea animals it has no IUCN status as not enough is known about it to determine if it is a threatened species.

Denizens of Deep Seas and Deep Time Part 2: The Coelacanth

Coelacanths are lobe-finned fish, which vary in size but can reach up to 6.4 feet in length and weigh up to 176 pounds. Scientists have inferred that they can live 80 to 100 years. Their closest living relatives are lungfish and as fossils they can be readily identified by their distinctive ‘tail flag’. They were long thought to be extinct because their fossil record seems to disappear quite abruptly along with the dinosaurs and many other creatures at end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago.

In the winter of 1938, trawler captain, Hendrik Goosen returned to London after an excursion to South Africa’s Chalumna River. He contacted friend and curator, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, beacause she delighted in looking through his exotic catch for anything interesting. She noticed a distinctive fish, which she described as "the most beautiful fish I had ever seen, five feet long, and a pale mauve blue with iridescent silver markings."

She could not identify the fish from any of her conventional texts so she tried to contact her friend and colleague, James Leonard Brierley Smith. Since he was on Christmas holidays, she sent the fish off to a taxidermist so it could be preserved until his return. When Smith saw the specimen, he immediately recognized the distinctive tail flag of the coelacanth, which until that point, he had only seen as a fossil. This specimen,which he named Latimeria chalumnae to honor Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, can still be seen in the East London Museum.

A worldwide search for more coelacanths advertised a reward of £100 but it took 14 years for another discovery to be made in the Comorian islands. The locals all knew of the coelacanth, as it occasionally appeared in fishermen’s catches but they always threw it away as it is inedible.

The coelacanth proved to be elusive animal because its natural habit is deep ocean. Some species have been found over 2000 feet below. Coelacanths are now known in the Comoros, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania. And now that the conservational value of the coelacanth is known by the Comorians, when they are accidentally caught, they are returned to deep water.

You can read Smith’s account of the coelacanth story in Old Fourlegs, which though published in 1956, is still in print. The coelacanth ahs also found its way into popular imagination through the years; I am a big fan of Ogden Nash and so thouroughly enjoyed this poem:

Consider now the Coelacanth
Our only living fossil,
Persistent as the amaranth,
And status quo apostle.
It jeers at fish unfossilized
As intellectual snobs elite;
Old Coelacanth, so unrevised
It doesn't know it's obsolete.
- Ogden Nash

Denizens of Deep Seas and Deep Time Part1: The Frilled Shark & Goblin Shark

‘Living Fossil’ is often a term applied to an animal that has a fossil record very far back in time but no close living relatives. This is a loose definition and taxonomists will argue about its specifics but we aren’t going to hash it out. Most people have at some point or another have heard of living fossils and you could probably come up with a list of common suspects: gingko, horsetail, horseshoe crabs, sphenodonts and the platypus, an egg-laying mammal. A popular theory has also pegged the Loch Ness Monster as worthy of living fossil status since it is ‘a plesiosaur trapped in time’. But you needn’t look to legend and mythology to discover sea monsters that are living fossils because we are still finding them today. This is the first in a three part series about Frilled & Goblin Sharks, Coelacanths, and Vampire Squids.

Sharks evolved about 400 million years ago and so they have had a lot of time to adapt and change to their environment. Their great diversity is familiar to us all: from the fearsome gape of the Great White to the bizarre, almost laughable appearance of the Hammerhead. Sharks as a whole group have been called living fossils, though the term is probably best applied to specific species which have changed very little through time and have few relatives.

Recently, two amazing discoveries of living fossil sharks were made off of the coast of Japan. On January 21, 2007, staff at Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, southwest of Tokyo, were alerted by fishermen to a 'strange eel-like fish with razor sharp teeth'. The 1.6 meter long female frilled shark appeared to be in poor health so was captured by park staff who placed it in a salt water tank. Unfortunately, the fish died a few hours after capture.

The frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) was discovered in Japanese waters in the 19th century and superficially, looks less like a shark and more like an eel. Its distinctive 'shark' features include its eponymous protruding gill slits which form a frill around its neck The frilled shark usually live at depths of 600 to 1,300 meters, feeding on small deep water fishes and squid. Park staff believe the animal came to the surface because it was unwell and disoriented.

More recently, another strange creature, a 1.3 metres long goblin shark was caught swimming in Tokyo Bay. It was transferred to an aquarium but also died a short time later. The goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) has a long pointed, rostrum and dwells at similar depths to the frill shark feeding on small fishes and crustaceans. The most striking feature of this odd animal is the snout which is thought to be an electrosensory device used to detect prey for capture.

Both the frilled and goblin sharks are so rare that only a few have ever been documented and studied since thier discovery in the 1800s. Their homes are so deep in the oceans that we cannot easily study their habitat, life history and reproductive habits. Ironically though we cannot reach them, it is likely that the polluting effects of our lifestyles reach their environment. But since we cannot determine if their populations are threatened by our actions they are not currently given protected status.