Huge congratulations to @Endurance_22 and @NatGeo for finding the wreck of #Shackleton’s #Endurance. The wreck is amazing but can we also talk about some of the #Antarctic sea floor creatures that now call it home! Add any others you spot to the thread! (1)
Huge #Antarctic sea anemones (Hormathia or similar) dangle their tentacles in the icy water! All of the animals that I have spotted so far are filter feeding! (2)
Sea squirts pump water in and out through their two syphons to collect plankton and marine snow (dead things and poo raining down from the surface). (3)
A beautiful brisingid starfish or sea star reaches out into the darkness to filter feed (4)
Stalked animals, probably glass sponges. Possibly similar to the life we found on the boulder under the Filchner ice shelf with @BAS_News (5)
Stalked ascidians or sea squirts? Any suggestions @echinoblog @Dr_MTaylor @DrShmoo @helena_wiklund @adrg1? (6)
And my favourite @Endurance_22 spot so far is the bright yellow sea lily or stalked #crinoid! Sea lilies date back over 480 million years and used to be very common and diverse in all the world’s oceans until the Triassic period! (7)
Thanks to @BBCAmos for helping me to get some clearer images! The solid structure of the ship plays home to a delicate and beautiful ecosystem of filter feeding animals 3km down from the icy surface! #Endurance22 #Shackleton #Antarctica
Sorry @BBCAmos I couldn’t resist giving it the #Titanic @LeoDiCaprio touch. This plucky sea anemone is hanging out at the bow of the ship and right now is “king (or queen) of the world” #Endurance22 #Antarctica
Ok so I changed my mind! In one of the higher resolution images shared by @BBCAmos my @BAS_News colleague Dr Katrin Linse and I just spotted a CRAB!!! Probably a munopsid of kiwa (yeti crab)! Crabs have NEVER been recorded in the Weddell Sea before! AMAZING find!
Here are the maps of previously recorded crabs and lobsters from around Antarctica from our paper ironically titled “Antarctic Crabs: Invasion or #Endurance?”!
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
The #Endurance seems to be being steered by a sea anemone at the wheel!
I would say that this appears to be some sort of coral! @Dr_MTaylor would know more! #Endurance22
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