The Marvelous Seamounts of the Southeast Pacific

nautil.us

35 points·dnetesn··9 comments

That spiky red walking sea toad [1] looks absolutely beautiful!

How do I get one and would it survive in an aquarium?

[1] https://assets.nautil.us/sites/3/nautilus/Keim_BREAKER-6.png...

Since these are living in brutal pressures in huge depths, you can't. It would die in surface pressure immediately, just like we die in vacuum, our whole body evolved around current conditions.

Some animals can handle massive differences in pressure since they dive very deep, but this fish clearly doesn't, hence no way its adapted to massive pressure fluctuations.

All you need to do is build an Abyss Box: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyss_Box

Woah how does it work? I'd imagine some kind of piston where the tank is closed solid but a piston exerts a pressure? How do you transfer these animals to and from it while keeping pressure?

It uses some special pumps and valves to maintain that pressure. The volume is under five gallons so it's just a matter of building a pump big enough.

It only houses animals that can survive the brief trip from deep sea into the tank.

Could you hatch the eggs at a normal pressure after slow decompression?

Would need a hyperbaric chamber.

Hard to even believe something so incredibly "weird" actually exists and is so beautiful.

Isn't it a strange and wonderful feeling to know that just like distant planets, which probably contain endless wonders, we can't fully explore or examine our ocean depths with just our hands and a shovel?

This is most likely for the best considering our track record, I suppose.

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