1. The deep sea is the part of the ocean out of the sun's reach. This starts about 200m down. And keeps going...for a very long time.
2. The deep sea is not only very deep, but very very big. In fact it's 103 million square miles. That's more than all the land on the planet.
3. And then remember that all of that space is full of stuff that looks like this.
But the deep sea is so big that male and female anglerfish have a real tough time finding each other to make babies. But don't worry they have a solution!
4. The male is tiny compared to the female, and once he finds a lady friend he bites her belly and holds on for dear life. He then gets fused to her and they share everything, blood and all!
5. We have only explored 5% of the ocean. So 95% of the ocean is unseen by human eyes, and you guessed it most of that is THE DEEP SEA.
6. A species of shark known as the megamouth shark, which can grow up to 5.5 metres in length, wasn't discovered until 1976.
7. In fact, something can hide down in the deep sea for about 70 million years.
8. So essentially don't be that surprised if this happens for reals soon.
9. There is life in the deep sea that doesn't rely on the sun. If the sun suddenly disappeared these worms would not give a shit.
10. The pressure at the bottom of the ocean is 1000X that of at the surface, yet things still actually live there.
11. Deep sea fish survive down there because they’ve never been anywhere else, so all the gas inside them is at the same pressure as the atmosphere down there, which is why they often look like puddles when you bring them up to the surface.
That's a blob fish, or Psychrolutes, seen on the left at sea level pressure and on the right in its natural habitat in the deep sea.
The real heroes are the deep diving mammals, who collapse their lungs each time they dive.
12. And, just a reminder – if you’re thinking, “I could live as a vacuum packed pancake in the pitch black by a boiling hot vent” – you’d have to live with this guy.
13. Everything tends to be bigger in the deep sea.
Deep sea giantism is a phenomenon in which many animals found in the deep sea are much larger than their shallow water relatives.
No one really knows why. One theory is that because it is hella cold down there (about 0 - 3 °C), so animals grow larger in order to have a large volume-to-surface-area ratio, and therefore are more heat efficient. Another theory is that larger size is a product of animals evolving to delay sexual maturity because of the scarcity of food.
That giant woodlouse thing is a Giant Isopod. It’s also another one of the deep sea’s living fossils and has been around since all the continents were stuck together in one big lump.
14. Deep sea giantism has produced some creatures that will give even the bravest humans the heebie jeebies.
15. And don't forget the giant squid!
16. And the really quite big Japanese spider crab!
Which can grow 3 metres from claw tip to claw tip.
17. Also sometimes it's not totally dark down there...
18. Cute huh? NO OF COURSE NOT. It comes from stuff like this.
19. And this thing, which produces red light, which is very unusual for a fish.
20. Also this lives there.
21. So to sum up! The deep sea is exceptionally deep and very big, and largely unexplored by humans, so we have no clue what's down there, and things keep popping up unexpectedly, and everything we have found is horrible.
And it's freezing, apart from where it's boiling from volcanic vents. And the pressure down there would crush most things to a pancake, but inexplainably things live down there, which presumably means they can take over the world.
😱😭😭😱