Deep Sea

The pictures of deep sea creatures were taken at the reseach vessel FS Polarstern of the AWI (Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany) during its cruise ANT XXIV/1 from Bremerhaven to Capetown.

The scientific work on board was part of the “Census of Marine Zooplankton” (CMarZ), an oceanic field project of the worldwide “Census of Marine Life” (CoML), which was concluded in 2010 after a duration of 10 years. The mission on this Polarstern cruise was to investigation the zooplankton throughout the entire water column of the oceanic stations, focusing in particular on the poorly known meso- and bathypelagic realms. The animals were brought to the surface from depths between 2000m and 5000 m and kept at temperatures of 4°C. Solvin was able to photograph many different species, fishes as well as invertebrates like crustaceans or worms, representing a wide size range between 0,05 mm and 30 cm. The animals remain alien to us although they are right there in front of our eyes. And there are so many of them. Their life, as we can vaguely perceive it, is mainly about floating with only rare but determining encounters, either with prey, mating partners or predators. The documented species belong to different classes or even phyla, but still often share some universal features in adaption to their huge, dark high-pressure environment. These features seem to give statements or recommendations for possible candidates: It is good to have light organs, red is a perfect camouflage color down there and so is transparency, lots of branching extensions and appendages enable floating and big eyes are advisable. Among them the deep sea pram bug called Phronima. To give his offspring a protected childhood the female Phronima cores a salp and keeps its own eggs and larvae sove in this housing, while constantly holding it over its head.

Award:

Award of Excellence – category SCIENCE/NATURAL HISTORY POYi 2008 Pictures of the Year International photojournalism competition
and in Nikon’s 2008 Small World Competition.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2011 at 3:31 pm. It is filed under Awards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.