Here’s a great reason why I won’t be sleeping well tonight: Yeti crabs. They look like giant, slightly fuzzy, ticks.

The little octopus is just adorable, though, in an entirely Cthulhuesque way.

Also, why I read EarthSky.org: they’re good about linking to published sources. Handy! Considerate!

I didn’t know lampreys were a problem species, other than in my dreams, of course.

Back up! Back up! Back up!

I’ve dreamed of kayaking in Alaska. I’ve also dreamed of getting snuffed out by a calving glacier.

Also: I adore how the Daily Mail can make an “article” out of stills from a YouTube video (linkies).

But watch this and wonder no more about where Japanese artists get their inspiration.

13-year-old NSW boy was knocked out and suffered a broken collarbone after a humpback whale swept its tail across the boat he was on.
Draw Hall, from Maclean near Grafton in the northern NSW, was fishing with his parents near Brooms Head on Sunday morning when a pod surfaced nearby.
One of the mammals lifted its tail and swept it over the five-metre long boat from bow to stern, hitting Drew, The Daily Examiner reported today.

What wouldn’t be cool is to still be in said dinky boat when a 14-foot shark comes along and eats the first one, nearly swamping the S.S. Dinky in the process.

What is even less cool–like heat death of the universe cool–would be one of my companions actively chumming the water. Said companion would get a nudge shark-ward, giving me time to get the engine going.

Pardon the cussing. Its not my video, but it is my nightmare.

Killer whales Orcas are one of my daughter’s many, many favorite animals. In fact, I don’t use “killer whales” anymore thanks to her goading.

Still, let’s not fool ourselves, they are apex predators and you, all fat and stuffed into a wet suit, are pretty much just an oddly rubber-tasting seal moments away from a bloodly, wet devourment*.

The researchers thought the predators might switch to very high frequency whistles to co-ordinate the hunt.
But the orcas actually go completely silent and are somehow still able to form organised hunting groups.

They used hydrophones – underwater microphones – to listen to and record orcas communicating with each other. The team could even hear crunching sounds when the animals were eating their prey.

Go ahead and listen at the article. Pretty awesome, actually.

File this under Things I Didn’t Know (and germane to the article’s point), but scientists believe that there may be two sub-species of orca. One “resident” species that primarily eat fish and a “transient” species that favor seal meat…mmmm…

Resident orcas hunt for salmon using echolocation. The orcas click, producing waves of sound that travel through the water and bounce off the fish, allowing the predator to sense its location.
“But all marine mammals have excellent underwater hearing,” explained Dr Deecke.
“If if a killer whale swam along clicking like mad, all the seals and porpoises would think – here comes a predators, let’s get away.”
But the transient orcas’ solution surprised the researchers.
“They go into stealth mode – completely silent,” said Dr Deecke. “This raises the question: how are they communicating?”
It seems that orcas can carry out complex, co-ordinated mammal-hunting trips without “talking to each other” at all.

That’s pretty sweet…but I’m still not going in the water with them

(Lastly, kudos for the BBC for linking to the source publication.)

*Turns out Devourment is a death metal band from Texas. No word on whether they sing about orcas.

Disappointingly, the article press release doesn’t tell us what species of giant icky monster this, but the Japanese variety can weigh upward of 19kg, which would be truly worth of a kaiju-riffic name like Crabzilla or Crab Kong. I think it is also why Gamera isn’t as popular a kaiju as Godzilla. You can’t add -amera to something and conjure up something giant and menacing.

Regardless, it is reason enough not to go into the water.

But looking up info on oarfish, I came across Mark Benfield‘s work at Louisiana State University. He’s working with oil and gas industry ROVs — submersible robots — to study wildlife. Hey, its the least the industry could do. No, seriously, the very least.

Last spring, Benfield published the first account of Stygiomedusa gigantea, a giant jellyfish, in the Gulf of Mexico. They aren’t trawler-eating big, but they are still fairly huge. They are apparently fond of grabbing onto underwater structures — such as pipelines or oil rigs — to use as a base for feeding. See, the oil industry is providing a valuable service!

Discover Magazine interviewed Benfield last month. Cool, shudder-inducing vid: