VIDEO: Strange Sea Creatures Discovered After Tsunamis

Shore is usually really strange after a storm. Beachcombers often can’t believe their eyes (or noses) when encountering some of the washed-up castoffs and even scientists can be befuddled on first impression. Of course, there’s always an explanation for the strange creatures that emerge from the deep sea.

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According to Wikipedia, the term “deep sea creature” refers to organisms that live below the photic zone of the ocean. These creatures must survive in extremely harsh conditions, such as hundreds of bars of pressure, small amounts of oxygen, very little food, no sunlight, and constant, extreme cold. Most creatures have to depend on food floating down from above.

These creatures live in very demanding environments, such as the abyssal or hadal zones, which, being thousands of meters below the surface, are almost completely devoid of light. The water is between 3 and 10 degrees Celsius and has low oxygen levels.

Due to the depth, the pressure is between 20 and 1,000 bars. Creatures that live hundreds or even thousands of meters deep in the ocean have adapted to the high pressure, lack of light, and other factors.

These animals have evolved to survive the extreme pressure of the sub-photic zones. The pressure increases by about one bar every ten meters. To cope with the pressure, many fish are rather small, usually not exceeding 25 cm in length.

Also, scientists have discovered that the deeper these creatures live, the more gelatinous their flesh and more minimal their skeletal structure. These creatures have also eliminated all excess cavities that would collapse under the pressure, such as swim bladders.

The lack of light requires creatures to have special adaptations to find food, avoid predators, and find mates. Most animals have very large eyes with retinas constructed mainly of rods, which increases sensitivity. Many animals have also developed large feelers to replace peripheral vision.

To be able to reproduce, many of these fish have evolved to be hermaphroditic, eliminating the need to find a mate. Many creatures have also developed a very strong sense of smell to detect the chemicals released by mates.

At this depth, there is not enough light for photosynthesis to occur and not enough oxygen to support animals with a high metabolism. To survive, creatures have slower metabolisms which require less oxygen; they can live for long periods without food.

Most food either comes from organic material that falls from above or from eating other creatures that have derived their food through the process of chemosynthesis (the process of changing chemical energy into food energy). Because of the sparse distributions of creatures, there is always at least some oxygen and food.

Humans have explored less than 2% of the ocean floor, and dozens of new species of deep sea creatures are discovered with every dive.

The extreme difference in pressure between the sea floor and the surface makes the creature’s survival on the surface near impossible; this makes in-depth research difficult because most useful information can only be found while the creatures are alive. Recent developments have allowed scientists to look at these creatures more closely, and for a longer time.