The Deeper You Sink, The Stranger You Become

If you sank from the ocean surface to the very bottom, turning into whatever lives at each depth, you'd expect the monsters to get bigger. They don't. The animals just get stranger, and the problems get bigger. You start as a lanternfish commuting the height of a skyscraper every night, become a "vampire" that eats snot-glued garbage, a tiny male anglerfish with one chance at love, a fish that stands on stilts waiting for dinner, and finally the deepest fish ever seen, living right on the line no fish can cross. Every character is an animal. Every fact is real (sources below). Chapters: - 0:00 The line no fish has crossed - 0:33 200 m: Lanternfish - 2:26 800 m: Vampire squid - 4:01 1,500 m: Male anglerfish - 7:03 4,000 m: Tripod fish - 8:01 8,336 m: Snailfish - 10:31 A world of problems Sources: - Lanternfish biomass, migration and counter-illumination: Wikipedia "Lanternfish" (citing Paitio et al. 2020); deep scattering layer: Reefs.com - Vampire squid diet: Hoving & Robison 2012, Proc. R. Soc. B, "Vampire squid: detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone" - Vampire squid arm-tip light: Robison et al. 2003, Biological Bulletin 205 - Anglerfish dwarf males and sexual parasitism: Pietsch 2005, Ichthyological Research 52 - Anglerfish immune genes: Swann et al. 2020, Science, "The immunogenetics of sexual parasitism" - Tripod fish: Bathypterois grallator species accounts (FNAM / EOL) - Deepest fish (8,336 m, 2022): Jamieson et al. 2023, "New maximum depth record for bony fish"; Guinness World Records - Hadal snailfish biology: Gerringer et al. 2017, Zootaxa 4358; TMAO depth limit: Natural History Museum London #deepsea #ocean #anglerfish #snailfish #vampiresquid #lanternfish #marinebiology #animals #science