Lynne Elkins’ previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Today, I am not here to talk to you about science*. Instead, I would like to share a truth that you may not have fully realized, which is that the ocean is a horrifying place full of monsters.
You might be thinking, “But I always wanted to be a marine biologist! I love dolphins!” And to be fair, dolphins can blow coordinated hunting bubbles and have names for each other and probably are much less prone to sexual assault than folks like to say. But most of the ocean is not made of dolphins, or even mammals. It is mostly full of worms.
Okay, fine, maybe not “mostly.” or “full.” But there are a lot of worms. Here, again, you might be saying, “But I wanted to be a marine biologist and study things other than charismatic megafauna! Marine worms are beautiful!” Sure, some of the worms have pretty colors and crazy fringes, which they obviously use as a glamour to fool gullible humans. But you are forgetting the most important thing: THEY ARE GIANT WORMS. And some of them look like this:
Less beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong: marine worms are fascinating. This is because monsters are terrible and fascinating. Consider, for example, the very famous Giant Tube Worms that live around deep sea volcanic vents. This is a 7 foot-long worm that can grow 5 feet in under two years, with no digestive tract, with which is red because it contains hemoglobin. In other words, it is a worm that nearly has blood that is taller than you and uses its mouth as its anus.
(These monstrous properties, of course, are the true reason to celebrate the 1991 discovery of the Tubeworm Barbecue.)
You might now be asking, “But what about non-worm things?” Sure. Let’s talk about some other creatures, like, say, echinoderms. Everyone likes starfish, right? Everything that isn’t hunted by starfish, I guess. Have you ever seen the inside of a sea urchin? I have, and please let me tell you about it: These alien monsters are almost completely hollow, except for a skinny intestinal tube that floats around inside their body, and the whole “Aristotle’s Lantern” skeleton mouth thing, which contains rasping teeth so hard they might be able to grind through rock (debated! these are things you debate about monsters.) The little hole at the top of the spiny shell is, in fact, the anus. Marine animals probably could be classed as horrifying simply based on the positions of their anuses. I would also like to address the whole “five-sided skeleton” thing, which, while interesting, is wrong and should not exist. Also, crinoids (sea lilies and feather stars) were echinoderms that reached a meter tall or more in the geologic past; and now we know that they are, in fact, still around, floating about or walking on their fronds like legs. I have touched them and seen YouTube and can confirm this is true. Summary: echinoderms are monsters.
Moving along: cephalopods, once the enormous monster predators of the oceans, are terrifyingly intelligent, curious, capricious thieves that can squeeze themselves through tiny holes and instantaneously mimic random objects (and to be fair, they still include some enormous predators, such as giant squid.) The mimic octopus takes cephalopod mimicry skills to terrifying heights. Blue-ringed octopods are some of the most venomous creatures on the planet, and they do bite humans. And the extreme deep-sea vampire squid (whose full latin name literally means “vampire squid of Hell”) is blood-red with “limpid, globular eyes,” can release a bioluminescent mucus into the water from its “writhing arms” which blinds opponents in a crazy light show that lasts up to 10 minutes, and can, you know, turn its own body inside out. Of course.
We have not yet discussed isopods. That is mostly because I wanted to delay the horror for myself. They are horrifying for many reasons, such as, for instance, what they look like:
But those examples, while terrible in appearance, are not the worst isopods, which honor is reserved for the parasitic isopods. Those are the ones that attach themselves to the tongues of fish, causing the tongue to wither and fall off; they then take up permanent residence in their host fish’s mouth. Some live off whatever food the fish is eating, while others drink the fish’s own blood. Oh God. Why am I writing about this.
Moving on! Sea squirts! At least sea squirts look neat, right? They aren’t parasitizing anyone’s tongue! This is positive! Except that in transitioning to sessile adulthood, the sea squirt, whose larval stage is nearly a vertebrate animal, proceeds to dissolve its own brain and most of its body structure so it can become a weird, squirty blob. Oh.
Sea hares are nektonic, shell-less gastropods that look like giant swimming vaginas.
Scallops are bivalves that have eyes and can swim.
This list is just far, far too long, so here is a summary of characteristics of many other marine invertebrates: they have squishy, gooey tentacle arms; they sting things, sometimes to kill; they coat things in disgusting, smelly, often stingy slime; they eat by digesting each other with juices; they poison our delicious food; and they parasitize each other and, sometimes, us.
And are they delicious? Yes. Many monsters are delicious.
What about vertebrates? They’re better, right? Nope; a thousand times nope. They are not better. They are worse. Here at The Toast you have already learned about the spectacular misandrist anglerfish female, who is parasitized by tiny males whose bodies are absorbed onto her side, and who thereafter accesses their gonads as she sees fit. She also happens to be a glowy-bobble-headed monster with hairy tendrils and weird skin and a giant mouth full of insane teeth.
Oh! And barreleye fish! Barreleye fish have see-through, bulbous, fluid-filled heads, with crazy giant eyes. Why would anyone need a transparent head? There is no reason, except to be a monster.
Other ridiculous, monstrous marine vertebrates have had their heyday on the internet; you may have seen them. The deep-sea blobfish turns into the quite-famous gooey, creepy monster blob when surfaced. The sheepshead fish has horrible, human-like teeth in its horrible monster mouth. The pacu is a fish best known for eating human testicles. Atretochoana eiselti, a legless amphibian, has been written about because of its horrifying appearance. Speaking of animals that resemble snakes, how about actual marine snakes? Like venomous reef snakes! They breathe through their skin and are, well, highly venomous snakes.
Also on the subject of snake-like things: whales. Whales are huge, sure, but mostly we are fond of them, because they are big smart mammals who like to do tricks and speak to each other in whale dialects. But then there are whale penises, and how those penises behave. So while a whale may not be very terrible, it could have a (surprisingly self-directed) monster appendage.
Then there’s what happens to dead whales, whose enormous, decomposing bodies on the deep sea floor feed whole ecosystems. A recent finding has revealed that in addition to these bizarre ecosystems created by dead whale carcasses in the deep ocean, other large marine animals like sharks provide similar habitats. The latest discovery is an ocean “graveyard” containing four such carcasses and some dead “devil rays,” all of which are covered in creepy eels and other creatures. Allow me to list the things that are wrong with this picture: 1) the giant carcass of a dead, decaying creature that was larger than an honest animal should be; 2) four of those; 3) the phrase “ocean graveyard,” have I mentioned that; 4) the swarms of eels that lie in wait to attack other feeders; 5) the phrase “feeding frenzy” altogether; 6) the fact that a lack of bone-eating worms is remarkable.
As a final note, I will ask you to consider how, exactly, the creatures of the oceans reproduce. (Other than the mammals and their giant, questing penises.) Fish, amphibians, corals, bivalves: how do they spawn? I will tell you: they eject their gonads directly into the water. Some of the sperms and some of the eggs may be lucky enough to find each other, so they can go off to grow a new monster. And the oceans are full of life that reproduces this way, and each animal that does so ejects hundreds of those gonads into the water each time it mates.
In other words: the thing the ocean is actually full of, is gonads. Trillions upon trillions of gonads. Every nose- or mouthful of water you accidentally ingest at the beach, every droplet you lick off your lips after snorkeling, every wave that splashes in your face when you’re riding on a speeding motorboat is, in fact, mostly the gonads of horrible monsters.
Let’s go swimming!
*No, really: this is completely outside of my scientific expertise. As a high-temperature geologist the presence of life is mostly annoying, because it obscures my rocks! So I happily solicit additions to my brief sampling of ocean monsters from the qualified biologists and oceanographers among us.
Tags: animals, lynne elkins, monsters, science, taking to the sea
I always knew it was true and now I have confirmation that the ocean is full of terrible things.
This is why 6 year old me couldn’t touch half the pages in the Childcraft book about the ocean. If they’re monsters under the ocean, maybe they can also leap out of pictures and be monsters at me in my living room. You NEVER KNOW.
I had that book too, and I’m still scarred.
I’d go on about how swimming in lakes is better than swimming in the ocean because No Monster Gonads, but lakes are full of beaver poop and giardia. *sob*
Oh, don’t worry, there are plenty of fresh water invertebrates and fish!
Don’t forget about the brain-eating amoebas!
My parents spent months trying to figure out what stonefish were and why I was petrified of them during our vacation to Florida that year. All because of that book! Sure, the book said they were in Australia, but what’s geography compared to the potential of stepping on what looked like a rock and dying painfully because it was actually a poisonous fish?
I swim in the nice chlorinated indoor pool in town and that’s it! No oceans, no lakes, no ponds, nothing!
OK. How big is that isopod in that picture? Cos I can read the text on the blue thing it’s standing on. And it looks about the size of a small dog. Please tell me that it is actually the size of a speck of dust.
Once when teaching in Japan one of my Japanese colleagues turned to me and asked me, “Do you find bivalves delicious?” as he’d looked up scallops in his dictionary and that is what came up, and now although I still eat and like scallops, I’m sure they taste a bit different in my mouth. Bivalves.
OK. I googled them and it is the size of a small dog. brb. *cancels the triathlon I was supposed to be doing in August*. Never going in open water again!
But it looks like a nit, you know like lice, those enlarged pictures of headlice, or fleas, catfleas. AAAARGH.
Whatever size it is, is wrong.
my question immediately as well
I think my upper lip is going to remain curled up in disgust for the next 2-3 years after looking at that penisy “legless amphibian” (which, yes, I am putting in quotes instead of penisy, because THAT is the part that seems a little made up).
noooo
YES YES LET’S LEARN ABOUT ALL THE HORRIFYINGLY CREEPY THINGS IN THE OCEAN FOREVER
YES
TAKE TO THE SEA WITH ME EVERYONE (safely, in large boats, where we can see but never ever touch these creatures, and also have many drinks).
Yes! It’s totally fascinating.
Case in point: the vampire squid from hell that “can release a bioluminescent mucus into the water from its ‘writhing arms’ which blinds opponents in a crazy light show that lasts up to 10 minutes, and can, you know, turn its own body inside out”? Come on! Amazing!
I think it’s all pretty cool, too!
It may not have been clear that I totally LOVE how the ocean is full of monsters! And I love going to sea! Even though I’m sick the whole time! Let’s go!
What’s even better is that you get drunk much faster on water than on land! So, you can save some of that booze money for therapy!
YEEESSSS
I live in eternal hope that my parents will someday act on the wealth of WAY PAST HINTS, GUYS I have died over the years and digitize the old VHS of the Nova episode on cephalopods so that I may have it always. It was called Incredible Suckers and it was perfect.
There was never anything visibly horrible in the sea in Dover other than discarded coke cans. I think I must venture further asea (asea is the aquatic equivalent to afield, right?) to encounter misandrist fish and isopods but most importantly the king of the ocean the southern right whale dolphins who eat myctophidae and I like to think of their round white tummies lighting up all green as they leap.
Even dolphins are gross as hell, guys. I went swimming with dolphins once, which was great except for the part where I saw a dolphin poop and remembered I was basically paddling around in its toilet.
TBF, they might think the same thing about our farts.
I live two miles from the ocean, and now those are two miles that I shall never cross again.
Is this the right place for an extruded starfish stomach picture? I got this at the Biodome in Montreal.
Yes. Yes, it is.
My Marine Biology professor said “When you swim in the ocean, you enter the food chain.”
Teacher of The Year.
At first I was like, “Oh wow, that’s clever!”
But then I thought , Um, aren’t we in a food chain right here, on land?
Unless bears, bacteria and brown recluse spiders have all gone aquatic, all of a sudden.
WELCOME TO THE OCEAN, JERKWADS
OH YOU THOUGHT THE ANIMATORS OF FINDING NEMO MADE ME UP
THAT’S CUTE
I’M TOTALLY REAL
I’M DOWN HERE WAITING FOR YOU
THAT WASN’T SEAWEED THAT BRUSHED YOUR FOOT JUST NOW
WE ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE GEORGIE
I mean, LOOK at that creature! It just makes me giggle uncontrollably that it exists.
Me too!
I can’t help but hear that fish grating WHAZZAAAAAAAAAP
My dad once told me that if you really wanted to find alien life you should look in the deepest depths of the sea.
He was right.
Yup — there’s a good argument to be made that we know more about the moon than the bottom of the ocean.
Oh, we know MUCH more about space than the oceans. They’ve barely even been mapped! Give us money to study oceans more, please, governments!
*nods* NASA’s budget is almost four times larger than NOAA’s, from the quick googling I just did, and I’d wager there’s waaaay more private contractors and firms who do space stuff than ocean stuff. We know nothing about it! And it regulates our climate to degrees we’re only just starting to figure out! WHY ARE WE NOT THROWING ALL OUR MONIES AT RESEARCHING IT?! /former astrophysics student who now does physical oceanography
(There is also an NSF division for ocean sciences! But yes, overall small. NASA’s budget for funding _research_ is also quite tiny, though!)
And it’s probably huge compared to the Canadian federal ocean science research budgets. Border three oceans, longest marine coastline in the world, and we do SQUAT ALL to figure out what’s going on with it other than to gawk for oil and occasionally marketable fish >:( >:( >:(
(sorry I know that’s not the point of this delightful list of marine biology but UGH IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY.)
Me too! The Canadian government is laying off marine biologists from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as fast as it can – whole departments are being laid off here on the West Coast; it seems the rationale is to build plausible deniability through ignorance.
Why are the older female orcas along the coast dying off in unprecedented numbers? Your guess is as good as mine! Why have the orca pods gone silent, when they’re usually quite chatty? No idea – because the people who study that sort of thing no longer work for DFO!
How will the humpback whales who give birth near Prince Rupert fare if Enbridge starts sending oil tankers through their habitat? Best guess – badly. They will fare badly, but the government ain’t paying to find out.
We should be rioting in the streets over this, but we’re Canadian, so…
UH HUNH. It’s not just the biology end of DFO that’s being decimated — it’s across the board. Everyone from biologists to physicists, turfed/shut up/unfunded/shuffled. Enviro Canada, too — you’re absolutely right that it’s a campaign of deniability through wilful ignorance.
(I assume you know about these people? http://www.evidencefordemocracy.ca )
I was going to study sharks. I got an English degree instead and have had to deal with exactly 0 monsters in my professional life
I’d’ve thought you’d come across at least some Dickens or Hemingway in the course of an English degree.
Correction: I have had to deal with exactly 0 monsters *in person* in my professional life
I got an English degree instead and have had to deal with exactly 0 monsters in my professional life
Congratulations on finding a magical academic department.
In retrospect it was actually weirdly lovely.
I didn’t stay in academia though and now work in an office, so ymmv on this as a sustainable life plan. While I do have to deal with some annoying people none of them have turned inside out (to my knowledge), tried to eat me, or thrown gonads at me.
I would almost prefer that to the standard passive aggression. At least you know what that protruding stomach means: something wants to eat you.
Oh man, this might be one of my favorite things on The Toast ever. Thank you (and DAMN YOU) for this. It encapsulates my lifelong terror of the sea, and reinforces my unconscious, limbic-system level of sea-avoidance. THE SEA. JUST DON’T DO IT.
NEEDS MOAR PIX!
Haha I know, but I really didn’t want to steal all the internet’s pictures! So I just linked to a lot of them instead!
Agree!
Pacu smiling at you:
HUMAN TEETH, I mean really, why
Pacus a). are freshwater fish and b). are known to eat people’s balls, and thus should be honored as our misandrist allies.
These are excellent points.
I love how the fish in the far left in the first picture seems to have just wandered into the shot: “Hey, Barry, I was thinking about what you said earli- GAH WHAT THE HELL TURN THE FLASH OFF”
But seriously, if I ever take to the sea, I will take to the sea in a boat. Or a zeppelin, so that I don’t have to get remotely close to the water.
it made me very sad, hearing all the mean things you said about the ocean
i came all the way up to the surface to make you feel guilty
don’t i look freakishly like your grandpa by the way
you know, the one you never call anymore
what
you’re too busy to talk to the man who taught you how to ride a bike
i am so disappointed in you
Poooor blobfish, so sad and blobby out of the ocean depths!
Oh my fucking god
Why is this never on the nature channel
Needs a big snarf and a couple of errant farts. Otherwise, perfect granddad.
My beloved wanted to study marine biology, attracted to the weird and gross such as we have in this post, not to the sleek and attractive such as at Sea World. When he could not get a big enough scholarship to get to the sea, far from his home in the US Midwest, he ended up studying … a slime mold. Yep, my beloved is sooo smart that he can find something even more disgusting than the critters in this post. And the most horrifying part, to me, is that he chose a slime mold that is *present in every handful of dirt* on every continent except at the poles. Yeah, I edited that dissertation. ::shivers::
I LOVE SLIME MOLDS
They’re SO WEIRD and COOL
I feel like Ruining Things is its own genre on the Toast. Possibly my favorite, though.
David Attenborough, even your dulcet tones cannot make whale penises any less terrifying.
I think the contrast of his calm narration adds even more than usual to that clip, though!
There is nothing in the world so delightful as David Attenborough talking about “polychaete worms” (which you’ll find everywhere in the ocean.) He makes that phrase sound as lovely and beguiling as the proverbial “cellar door”.
Or their ONE TON GONADS. Jesus.
AAAAAAAH THE OCEAN IS THE BEST AND THIS IS PART OF THE REASON WHY. :D:D:D
(Other parts include, but are not limited to, the giant carbon sink, ridiculous fluid dynamics, hard-for-me-to-bend-my-head-around geology, and seaweed.)
Ok but my favorite cephalopod is the flamboyant cuttlefish. 1. HI AWESOME NAME 2. Tiny, colorful things are irresistible & 3. Cuttlefish are cool.
Cephalopods are the undisputable best.
For perspective: http://kreejay.tumblr.com/post/48747839982/cupand…
And finally, one of my favorite videos of marine life: http://youtu.be/PmDTtkZlMwM
DID YOU KNOW Cephalopods can change the appearance of the texture of their skin?
It probably says something about me that I knew exactly what video that was going to be
One of my favourite fish is this guy because his scientific name is BOOPS BOOPS, what’s not to love?
Meanwhile, Pomadasys incisus is a fish more commonly known as “Bastard grunt” which is also delightfully evocative.
I want to know why 5-point skeletal symmetry is a thing that is interesting, but shouldn’t exist.
Well. Mostly because this is a very serious post where all the things I say are definitely true!
But also, natural minerals don’t have five-fold symmetry. 1-, 2- and 3- fold and their multiples, sure, but not 5. Organisms obviously do their own things beyond inorganic crystal growth, but this one group of animals has clearly decided (consciously, obvs) to break the rules of Nature. Which is a thing I am very serious about.*
* You don’t know me, so you may not know that this is NOT a thing I am actually serious about! Except, of course, when I must argue with people who are overly invested in the natural/unnatural false binary.
I’d eat an isopod.
This is amazing and I want to be in the ocean right this very minute looking at all these wonderful monsters. Thank you!!!
ECHINODERMS **SHUDDER**
Especially crinoids. My husband is a geologist and has some random crinoid stalk fossils floating around the backs of drawers in our house and I HATE them. Stop trying to be plants, crinoids, you are not plants.
Aw, I love them, but they are very freakish!
For Happy-Fun-Time isopod horror movies (because why not), The Bay is fricking awesome. And terrifying. And on the Netflix and Amazon Prime last I checked.
Ooh, has anyone mentioned Greenland Sharks and their parasites yet? Greenland sharks are one of the biggest sharks, so big they can eat polar bears. And almost all of them have little dangly fishhooks living off their eyeballs! http://seapics.com/assets/pictures/009760-200-gre…
Speaking of, orca are much scarier than sharks. Sharks just have that cultural cachet. There’s at least one horror movie that stars genetically engineered super sharks: they’re bigger and stronger and they hunt tactically in packs and they can even chase you right out of the water! In other words, they’re ordinary orca.
YESSSS eyeball parasites, so awesome
There are no reports of wild orcas ever killing anyone. That is what I tell myself when I go for my daily swim, because transient orcas, (not, like, hobo orcas – they just like to travel up and down the coast as opposed to resident orca pods, which stay in one place) sometimes come into the harbour to eat seals.
I look like a seal when I swim – same shape, dark bathing suit, same propensity to bob up and down while hanging out in deep water. I know that a shark would be biting my legs off in a second before deciding I’m not its favourite prey, but those smart orcas – they’d spot those dangling legs and just swim away. Right? Right?!?!
The thing is though there’s no difference between ‘no reported attacks’ and ‘no bodies recovered’
I mean I’m not saying, but I’m saying.
Don’t worry, unlike sharks the orcas would flip you around out of the water and play with your first, probably figuring out that you weren’t a seal somewhere in there. That’s comforting, right?
Pretty happy with Lake Michigan right now, nothing scarier there than maybe a fish that might jump out at a boat I don’t have.
Given everything we have tossed into Lake Michigan, I am not convinced it hasn’t mutated something just as terrifying by now.
There was a whole video on octopus that mimics the things they hid on and it’s FLAWLESS how they mimic. Also, terrifying. I worked for a summer at the New England Aquarium, and while I was there our resident octopus got out of her own tank one night, crossed over to the tank next to it (adjoining, but STILL), OPENED THE LID, entered, ate all of her neighbors, exited the tank, CLOSED THE LID AFTER HER, and returned to her own tank.
Yup. We’re all doomed.
I really have to stop eating octopus.
Gods no, eat them before they eat us!
WHY DOES THIS ONLY FILL ME WITH DELIGHT
The pacu is a fish best known for eating human testicles
TOAST MASCOT
My partner and I have this thing we talk about called the Nightmare Threshold. The Nightmare Threshold is a measure of how many of a particular creature (e.g. cats, dogs, bees, straight white dudes) can surround you before you are living in a nightmare. For me, cats have a high Nightmare Threshold, like it would take maybe 100 cats or more before I got uncomfortable. At the other end of the spectrum are slugs, which, for me, have a Nightmare Threshold of 1 because I hate them and never want them anywhere near me.
We have frequently discussed whether there are creatures in the world that have a Nightmare Threshold of 0, which is to say that the mere knowledge of their existence is nightmarishly unsettling.
I think this article answers that question.
I am adopting this into my life.
Yes this is a very useful concept.
I like how the fish in that first photo also looks grossed out by the intestine worm thing.
I’m not sure what it says about me that this post just makes me want to take to the sea, but here we are.
You and I are united in this.
Oh geez, you guys, I’ve been informed that the ocean is actually full of GAMETES, not GONADS. This is not a surprise: I always mix those words up. But, it’s still full of sperms and eggs! Which is what I meant!
I suppose this is excellent support for the statement that I am very, very far from being a biologist of any kind!
Oh well! More fun times with lovable ocean monsters for the rest of us! *Hops into wetsuit, fits mask, dives in.*
Am going for a swim in the horrifying, magnificent ocean right now.
But you’ve forgotten one primal ingredient— love— that’s right, love. If that thing that appears to be a pile of intestines was YOUR pile of intestines, you’d feel differently about it.
But you've forgotten one primal ingredient— love— that's right, love. If that thing that appears to be a pile of intestines was YOUR pile of intestines, you'd feel differently about it.
waiiiiit isopods are friends
see http://fuckyeahgenderstudiesisopod.tumblr.com to feel better about them
waiiiiit isopods are friends
see http://fuckyeahgenderstudiesisopod.tumblr.com to feel better about them
I have an endless capacity and limitless desire to read about the monsters of the deep. I would like many more articles on The Sea, The Toast. Possibly a sister website.
There was never anything visibly horrible in the sea in Dover other than discarded coke cans. I think I must venture further asea (asea is the aquatic equivalent to afield, right?) to encounter misandrist fish and isopods but most importantly the king of the ocean the southern right whale dolphins who eat myctophidae and I like to think of their round white tummies lighting up all green as they leap.
This is possibly the best article ever, I love this, I love all of it, especially this line “Marine animals probably could be classed as horrifying simply based on the positions of their anuses.” because it is true and yet also 50% of the reason why I find marine animals so delightful. They’re anus free-for-alls.
I am so, so happy to have grown up and once again be living in Kansas, because the only horrifying marine creatures around here are fossils.
I’ve mistrusted the ocean ever since my first dip in it at 17 on a family trip to Hawaii, where I kicked a coral reef by accident and required 13 stitches in my foot.
I am so, so happy to have grown up and once again be living in Kansas, because the only horrifying marine creatures around here are fossils.
I've mistrusted the ocean ever since my first dip in it at 17 on a family trip to Hawaii, where I kicked a coral reef by accident and required 13 stitches in my foot.
Well, now I know what to get you for xmas…
http://paganwandererlu.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/s…