The Ocean Depths Animals

The Ocean Depths Animals
By Leo Lassen and Logan Banning-Shaughnessy

At the deepest point in the ocean, the pressure is so great, It’s as if one person tried to support fifty jumbo jets. And somehow thousands of fish and other life forms have adapted to live on the ocean floor.

The animals on the lower part of the food chain have interesting ways of living. The tubeworm for instance. The tubeworm lives right near hydrothermal vents. The worms can grow up to eight feet. What’s odd is they do not have eyes, mouth, or even stomach. Instead they have bacteria in them that convert the chemicals that come out of the vents into food. The process is called chemosynthesis.

Scientists may be interested in the process chemosynthesis. Because they may be able to use the process to create a product that is more sustainable towards the earth. Maybe a food that doesn’t need sunlight to grow. It may be something that could help with world hunger.

Another is the Pompeii worm. It’s the hottest animal in the world, being able to stand temperatures up to 80º C (176º F). The worm makes a papery-like home that’s attached to the vent. The Pompeii will stick it’s head out of it’s home into 22º C (72º F) water to cool off and eat passing bacteria.

And the Pompeii has a coat of bacteria on it’s back that can also “take the heat.” And since they might have enzymes that we could use to dislodge oil inside wells, process food and drugs, convert cornstarch into sugar and many other things by speeding up chemical reactions.

60% of our planet is a mile down in the deep-sea. It is the largest habitat on our planet and it is the least explored as well, in fact more people have gone to outer space than into the deep-sea.

Deep-sea predators usually spend time hiding on the ocean floor. The adapt to places such as the deep-sea floor by being camouflaged to the colors of the ground, being flat, so they can move along the ocean floor unnoticed And having eyes on the top of their head so they can see their prey swimming above.


The Ocean Depths Animals The Deep-sea stargazer is a bulldog-like fish that most of the time buries itself in the seafloor and ambushes passing prey. Its eyes are on the top of its head so it can be almost buried all the way.

And the viperfish and anglerfish have antennas on their bodies that give off a bioluminescent glow. And that glow lures prey in. And most predators have large jaws, to devour larger prey. And almost all of their teeth stick inward so that prey has little chance of escaping.

And I think it’s amazing that there is a giant world below us that we know so little about, but that can help with certain problems we have on the surface, such as cancer and unsustainable products. And that there are so many undiscovered species down on the ocean floor. But of course we humans have come a long way in our discoveries and we have only been here for the tiniest fraction of the Earths lifetime.

Bibliography

http://images.google.com/

http://www.marinebio.com/Oceans/TheDeep/

http://www.ocean.udel.edu/extreme2002/creatures/pompeiiworm/

http://www.ocean.udel.edu/deepsea/level-2/creature/tube.html