#oceanexploration

Dive in without getting wet! 💻

Over the last few years, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries awarded $10.5 million to three organizations for deep-sea exploration and research and to enable viewers across the globe to explore wonders of the deep ocean virtually. Despite interruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, each organization created opportunities for students, teachers, and families to explore shipwrecks, coral reefs, a remarkably intact whale fall, an octopus garden, and more.

Doing Two science based streams this week!

Cyborg Jellyfish and Ocean Exploration, Tuesday at 11am to 1 PM

Do Octopus Appreciate Art? 4PM to 6 PM

Catch me on Twitch or YouTube!

Jellyfishes!

Medusas!

These amazing marine creatures are invertebrates from the Cnidaria phylum. Inside this phylum, they are part of two of the three classes: Hydrozoa and the ‘true big jellyfishes’ the Scyphozoa Class. The big difference with the other Class (Anthozoa) is the presence of the jelly pelagic stage in the life cycle. In The organisms inside Anthozoa the only stage with movement through the water column is the larvae - part of the sexual reproductive part in spawner and brooder corals.

Jellyfishes life cycle!

Jellyfish have a fascinating life cycle, that involves multiple metamorphosis and lifestyles. Their extreme reproductive versatility is one of the reasons that they can “bloom” overnight and take over oceanic landscapes. Generally, jellyfish are gonochorists, meaning that they will have one sex. So, when mama and papa spawn their respective eggs and sperm and fertilization occurs, the happy little “planular larvae” will cruise the currents until he stumbles upon a nice piece of ground where he can settle and transform into a polyp. This polyp then grows into a “Scyphistoma” which grows and grows to evolve into a “Strobila” which you can imagine as looking as a number of strangely formed discs stacked on top of each other. At this stage asexual reproduction occurs as the Strobila sends one disc after the other of into the big wide world, at which point we ll call them “Ephyra” before they themselves turn into the magnificent medusae which we recognize as the typical Jellyfish form.

In this previous gif you can see a related organism, a Ctenophore! Same as jellyfishes, you can find these creatures in shallow, mesophotic and deep-sea environments. Between 200-500m, but scientists 🥼 have registers even at 2000m depth!

While this is the basic circular story, there are more tricks and measures that jellyfish can employ: the strobila can create little cysts when life gets hard and food gets scarce: these can indefinitely hibernate until the conditions get favourable again and it can evolve into a little polyp of its own. We know of one Jellyfish, Turiitopsis dohrnii, that can actually REVERT the direction of this circle, and once already a medusa, turn back into a polyp, in essence completely rejuvenating itself through cellular transdifferentiation when under stress. Scientists are obviously studying this phenomenon extensively- who would have thought the fountain of youth might be gelatinous?

Here you can see some jellies but also some cephalopods....what do you think...maybe our next organisms at #taxonomy Tuesday(?) 🐙

#jellyfish #stung #sciart #sciencecommunication #scicomm #scienceblogger #scienticillustration #lifecycle #marinebiology #marinescience #marinebiologist #Scyphozoa #hydrozoa #womeninstem #seaanimals