Vast quantities of stuff

[image source]

So in the past, the deep-sea goblin shark hasn't really been studied all that much in its natural environment because, well, deep sea.

Buuuut!

Guess what's happened for the first time, y'all

The deep-sea goblin shark has been studied in its natural environment for the first time!!

Goblin sharks are, essentially, living fossils. They're the only extant (living) species of a lineage that goes back nearly 125 million years. Their origins are further back that some dinosaurs!!

They're not pretty and they're not friendly looking either but they're still adorable!

The problem with goblin sharks is that they've only really ever been studied after getting caught in deep sea fishing nets and lines so pretty much nothing is known about how they behave, interact, etc etc beyond physiological stuff. Which, honestly, sad af because it's meant we've mainly had to guess about them (educated guesses but still guesses all-the-same).

But times are a-changing now!

Side-note: their faces are so weird okay, I love them.

[image source]

Back in 2019 though, there was an expedition to investigate the deep-sea ecosystems around Jarvis Island which, btw, is a protected wildlife area about a thousand nautical miles south of Honolulu. The lead author of this study, Aaron Judah, examined a load of footage from the dive around Jarvis Island and confirmed that what the expedition members thought was a goblin shark was, indeed, a goblin shark.

Then, in 2024 another sighting was reported in the Tonga Trench (near Fiji in the southern Pacific) via a baited camera (they got to see it actually eating food!!!). So Judah looked at that footage in his study too!

The thing is tho... is that the Tonga Trench is the second deepest marine trench in the world. Second only to the Mariana Trench. And the goblin shark seen in the Tonga Trench at a depth of almost two thousand metres!

Prior to that sighting, it was believed that goblin sharks only dived to around 1300 metres at most! So this is monumental!!

So, not only was a goblin shark seen at a depth far greater than it was believed they dived to, but it was also viewed in its natural, alive state, existing and being alive and that's just- it's just amazing! And geographically, too! Now, we now know that the range of goblin sharks is larger than we previously thought.

This is honestly amazing and kinda world-changing just like the new footage of the Greenland shark. We now have new avenues of research and study into goblin sharks and how they exist and interact with deep-sea ecosystems and that's just beyond amazing.

With these sightings and the new information about goblin sharks, the species can be added to the list of recorded species in a protected area too!

And if you want to see video the sighting, here it is!

Or you can watch the YouTube video below instead

Deep down I blame myself. I've always blamed myself.

So, when you see trees in a forest, they stick up outta the ground, some distance from each other, and you're like 'these are unconnected critters,' right? But! The thing is! Just like the trees in the picture are connected above-ground, trees in a forest are normally connected below-ground. There's this whole complicated thing involving a symbiotic relationship with fungi, but we're gonna simplify it to this: trees connect to each other through their root systems.

And they use it to share resources, across the whole forest.

If there's a tree over here growing in soil with a lot of, like, potassium, they'll pull up more potassium than they need, and send it out through the root system to other trees that are living where there isn't much potassium.

And one of the coolest things? Trees communicate their needs. If a tree is sick or damaged or starving, they send chemical messages out through the root system that tell the other trees to send them more food and tree-equivalent-of-immune-system.

Trees will share so much of their resources, they'll even keep trees alive that are almost entirely dependent. Like this tree! The tree above is getting some energy from its leaves, but no other nutrition of its own. And it wasn't able to link up to the shared root system. So the other tree reached out and hooked up to it directly, feeding it all of the nutrients it needed!

You see it more commonly the other way around: in an old-growth forest, where the roots are well-established, you can find stumps where a tree was cut down a century ago... but if you scrape the stump it's still green wood. The tree's still alive, without a single leaf. Because all the other trees in the forest are feeding it.

I promised to talk about matriarch trees, so here's where we get to them.

In a very old forest, you have very old trees. You have some trees that are so very, very old, their own roots cover entire regions of the forest. Their leaves reach up to the sky over everyone else. And after so long, they've developed to where they can take in way more resources than they need.

So what do they do?

They feed baby trees.

Baby saplings in an old forest can't reach up to the sun. There's no light down there. And their roots are too small and shallow to dig down to the nutrients they need. So the matriarch tree will draw energy from its towering canopy, and nutrients from its massive, ancient roots, and feed them to the little trees that are too small to feed themselves. For anything she can't get on her own, she'll act as a central hub, taking in spare resources from the rest of the forest and giving them to the little ones.

And one of the best parts - she won't just do it for her own species. She'll connect to all kinds of trees, because they're all necessary for the ecosystem to work. She'll adopt the whole forest's children.

Sometimes in forests you'll find a spot where there are a lot of small trees in an open space around an old, fallen tree. People generally assume they could find more light there, or maybe the soil's more fertile from the decomposition.

But no.

ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS (2026)- Wine's Outfits

(EP 1 | EP 2 | EP 3 | EP 4 | EP 5)

I’m sorry I'm late! I’m Lallalin, Head of Sales. I was starting to think you weren't coming. There's no way I'd miss the chance to get to know you, Mr. Korn.