Dr Craig R McClain
@drcraigmc.bsky.social
Deep-sea biologist. Two obsessions: the biodiversity of Earth's largest habitat, and why body size varies across all of life. Science communicator, ocean's weirdest animals daily.
![Comic. [Person with long hair pointing to diagram with Tyrannosaurus Rex standing next to a person.] PERSON: We now believe the primary prey of Tyrannosaurus Rex was these humans who kept standing next to it for scale.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreih526pxolmi4pgqdcdu435uhkrrldhpwq6rrsnk4hfs6dskbe5r7e)
For no particular reason at all, Ed Sheeran is on my mind. Anyway: the gulper eel is almost all mouth, unhinging its jaw to swallow prey larger than itself before deflating to a thin whip. A whole animal built around the shape of you. 🐟 🧪 #marinelife
Watch this eel inflate its head like a balloon
YouTube video by Science Magazine
youtu.be
Some glass sponges may be the oldest animals on Earth. Individuals of Monorhaphis chuni are estimated at over 11,000 years old, and they build a single skeletal spike up to 3m long, the largest natural glass structure any animal makes. 🧪 #SpongeThursday #HowToBuildAGiant #marinelife
Everyone had their own weird way of coping with the pandemic, and mine was photographing nudibranchs on the California coast. Fun to have been able to parlay that into a PNAS cover, and to have been part of such interesting work led by @isaacpesca.bsky.social & @drcraigmc.bsky.social! #nudibranch
Never thought I’d wake up and see @echinoblog.bsky.social @noaa.gov on the front page of the celebrity gossip subreddit. But I guess we have two new #deepsea celebrities! www.reddit.com/r/popculture...
When your postdoc @isaacpesca.bsky.social is so awesome they give him the cover of PNAS! Excellent photo by @sethf.bsky.social! And excellent coauthors of @pedromonarrez.bsky.social @tomjwebb.bsky.social among others.
Climate change affects the physiology of animals in different ways. Many shrink, but some grow, and the change can also depend on where the animal lives. 🧪 Link: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2606099123
As the climate changes, some mollusks will shrink to half their current size, while others will grow up to 15% larger, depending on lineage and location. The ecological and social consequences for marine ecosystems could be profound. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/iUo450ZJsTl
[Commentary] Deep in the Gulf of Mexico, the unique and unstudied Orca Basin is threatened by corporate plans to dump organic waste for carbon storage. In this op-ed, deep-sea biologist @drcraigmc.bsky.social warns that this ancient deep-sea ecosystem is a living system, not a waste repository.
Gulf of Mexico’s unique Orca Basin shouldn’t become a carbon dump (commentary)
It’s 3 a.m. and I am standing on the deck of a research vessel, staring into water so dark it looks solid. I feel what I felt standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, watching the sun set: there are…
mongabay.cc
UL Lafayette-led study finds climate change won’t simply shrink marine life
UL Lafayette-led study finds climate change won’t simply shrink marine life
Research led by scientists at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette challenges a long-held assumption about the effects of climate change on marine life: warmer oceans won’t simply make animals
louisiana.edu
#InsertAnInvert2024 WHO ARE IN THE FALSE CRABS. The Anomura, on the right side, include: - squat lobsters (contains porcelain crabs) - more squat lobsters (contains Lomis, yeti crabs) - mole crabs - hermit crabs (contains king crabs, coconut crabs) 🦀🦑🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Gwyn Mingham@alsogwenny.myatproto.social · 3y agoI turned @elksneedle.bsky.social 's explanation & analogy for carcinisation into an info poster :)
![Will We All Turn Into Crabs Eventually? The process where unrelated species evolve over time to develop similar features is known as convergent evolution.
Carcinisation. When crab-like crustaceans do not develop a crab shape over time, this is called carcinisation. This form of convergent evolution has led to the emergence of "false crabs" such as the king crab.
[hermit crab and an arrow pointing to a king crab & squat lobster and an arrow pointing to a porcelain crab]
Video game controllers. [NES, N64 & Switch on the left & xbox on the right]
Carcinisation has only occurred in crustaceans. The crab-like body structure is useful for their specific anatomy, as it offers them protection, helps with mobility and feeding. Video game controllers have developed a similar shape over time, which simply makes the most sense for their use. However, just as not every animal evolves into a crab, not every technology will eventually end up looking like a video game controller.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ircutzc5ebmhwvrkqso7x2er/bafkreicvgcv2hodqkuuhpuk5mx47lfk7nqx5wyvfo4zzxcsodhqbifvq2m)
A company got EPA approval to sink 20 tons of sugarcane waste into the Gulf's Orca Basin to "store carbon." Even if they blanketed the entire basin, it would offset less than a week of human emissions, while risking one of the rarest ecosystems on Earth. I wrote for @mongabay on why. 🧪 #marinelife
Gulf of Mexico’s unique Orca Basin shouldn't become a carbon dump (commentary)
It’s 3 a.m. and I am standing on the deck of a research vessel, staring into water so dark it looks solid. I feel what I felt standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, watching the sun set: there are p...
news.mongabay.com
Delighted to see this out now in PNAS - how do we expect marine mollusc body sizes to react to the coming decades of climate change? Check our Craig's thread for details…
Dr Craig R McClain@drcraigmc.bsky.social · 4w agoNew in PNAS today: we projected how climate change will reshape the body size of marine life across the entire ocean. 23,329 mollusc species, every ocean basin. The headline everyone expects is "life shrinks." The real answer is far stranger. 🧪 #marinelife www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
A very on-theme #MolluscMonday: our new PNAS paper projects how 23,000+ mollusc species will change size as the ocean warms. Most shrink, some grow, and which happens comes down to body plan. Clams downsize. Squid may bulk up. 🦑 🧪 #MolluscMonday #HowToBuildAGiant #marinelife
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
pnas.org
New in PNAS today: we projected how climate change will reshape the body size of marine life across the entire ocean. 23,329 mollusc species, every ocean basin. The headline everyone expects is "life shrinks." The real answer is far stranger. 🧪 #marinelife www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Nonuniform resizing of marine life under climate change | PNAS
Global warming is often predicted to drive universal declines in animal body size, but empirical evidence remains equivocal. This is particularly t...
pnas.org
More potential destruction of our national parks
Old rift reopens as Trump administration amends Grand Teton pathway decision - Mountain Journal
Conservation groups decry the federal government’s do-over as both a dubious procedural maneuver and threat to wildlife. But longtime trail advocates are pleased.
mountainjournal.org
America's national parks are being quietly taken apart: mass layoffs, record budget cuts, monuments shrunk by millions of acres, protected land reopened to drilling. None of this is speculation. Ten sourced examples, one at a time. 🧪
The heaviest living thing on Earth isn't a whale or a tree, it's a fungus in Oregon spread across 2,000+ acres and thousands of years old, most of it underground. We picture giants as tall. Some of the biggest just quietly went wide, out of sight. 🧪 #HowToBuildAGiant #plants
Godzilla could never actually stand. Scale a body up and weight climbs faster than bones can bear, so a lizard the size of a building would collapse under itself. The only place to be that big is the ocean, where water carries the weight. Kaiju would all need to be marine. #HowToBuildAGiant #Kaiju
The largest arthropod ever was a sea scorpion. Jaekelopterus stretched about 2.5 meters, longer than a person is tall, hunting the seas 400 million years ago with claws half a meter long. Nothing with an exoskeleton has come close since. 🦂 🧪 #FossilFriday #HowToBuildAGiant Artwork by Dani Navarro
Elpidiidae ballast dump before liftoff @nautiluslive.org dive 8.25.25 #MarineLife
Kentro-saurus? More like Kentro-glaze-us. Those spikes were once for defense. Now, strictly pastry.
Ben Miller@extinctmonsters.bsky.social · last mo.I hope this guy shows up today
At 7,200 m in the Java Trench, most scavenging amphipods swarm the bait. But one kind ignored it, clinging to worm tubes and the camera lander for hours and shoving off any neighbor that tried to muscle in. First time this is seen in a hadal scavenger. #marinelife doi.org/10.1093/jcbi...
The bigfin squid was first hauled up in 1883 and not formally described until 1998, 115 years later. A new paper compiling every sighting shows it lives across three oceans and down past 6,000 m, yet it's still known only to genus, identified from grainy deep-sea video. 🦑 🧪 #marinelife
Global distribution and depth of the Bigfin squid Magnapinna spp - Marine Biology
The Bigfin squid Magnapinna spp. is elusive and rarely encountered, yet its charismatic morphology of large fins and extraordinarily long tentacle filaments makes it an instantly recognisable deep-sea...
link.springer.com
An online exhibit worth your time: artists paired with deep-sea biologists to turn real research into art. Bigfin squid in linocut, carnivorous sponges in wire, vent octopus in watercolor. Run by the Deep-Sea Biology Society, and gloriously full of overlooked invertebrates. 🧪 #SciArt #marinelife
ART & SCIENCE - All Artworks
PANDORA'S SUBMERSIBLE Julia & Elyse
artseamatchmaking.com