A single drop of seawater can teem with living creatures. Though this world is invisible to the naked eye, Spanish wildlife photographer Angel Fitor devised a way to capture these infinitesimal ecosystems, from the mating of copepods (one of the most abundant animals on the planet, which range from 0.2 to 1.7 millimeters long) to a sea worm protecting an egg. The project took three …
A recent study has reversed the commonly held belief that stingrays are silent. For the first time, the creatures’ sounds were captured in a video depicting two mangrove whiprays and a cowtail stingray making clicking noises. Prior to the study, the only evidence that they are vocal came from research published in 1970 that saw a cownose ray making noise, but only after it was …
Marine biologists have struggled to study sea creatures in middle depths due to frigid temperatures, air pressure and visibility, but a new device called DeepPIV will change this. It can perform CT scan-like surveys of animals and transmit data back to computers to be composed into super-detailed 3D images. For the process, a thin beam of laser light runs through each creature, producing a rendering of …
