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Many deep-sea fish share common characteristics that tend to make them look rather bizarre and nightmarish. They're usually black or red to blend in their surroundings (red wavelength of light is the first to be absorbed by water so at these depths red and black would look the same), have either enlarged or reduced eyes, organs that can generate light to lure prey or help hide their outline against what little ligth filters from above, and often large mouths with huge amounts of long needle-like teeth and soft flabby bodies that don't really look like what we tend to think of as "typical fish" (though if you go by sheer numbers, the typical fish is actually a deep sea lanternfish or bristlemouth).
Food is scarce as no plants exists at these depths, making the ecosystem entirely reliant on dead organic matter falling from above or species that migrate closer to surface to feed (with the exception of ocean floor hydrothermal vents, which are one of the few ecosystems completely independent from sunlight). Everything that lives here is either a predator or a scavenger, and many fish have the ability to swallow prey their own size or even larger, as they can not afford to pass on a meal just because it's bigger than they are and probably also trying to eat them. Hence the deep sea is also known as underwater vore hell (probably not by actual scientists, though if you are a marine biologist, I encourage you to try to make the term catch on in scientific literature).

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Probably the most iconic deep sea fish is the deep sea anglerfish. Truly, we can learn much from such noble creature.
Anglerfish are actually a very diverse group of fish. Most deep sea anglers do have the basically same body shape (angry football) and the iconic lure at the end of a "fishing pole" (esca and illicum, respectively), but some have longer body shape, don't have a lure, have multiple filaments all over their bodies or a "beard" on their chin, have the lure inside their mouth, or have weird beartrap-like nightmare jaws. The lure is often, but not always, bioluminescent. Some angler species seem to have evolved bioluminescense twice for some reason. Most are small enough to fit on your hand, but the largest species is about 1,6 m long.
As is commonly known, the deep sea anglerfish you normally see are all females. The males are far smaller, lack the lure and even functioning digestive system when sexually mature, but have very sharp senses that let them hopefully find a female and mate with her before dying (quite common among deep sea fish). In some species the male famously fuses with the female, his organs atrophying over time until reduced to just a pair of gonads. In most species the male just dies after mating, though. It seems some species with fused males only ever have 1 male per females, while others can have multiple males attached to the same female.

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Bumping this good thread.

>tfw the best book about deep sea cost like 100 bucks
and I bought it

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The other big iconic group of deep sea fish are the dragon- and viperfish, themselves a part of the order Stomiiformes, which also includes bristlemouths and those deep sea hatchetfish that look like damned souls when viewed from the front.
Dragonfish tend to have long and thin scaleless bodies with multiple light-producing organs and often long barbels whose true purpose is unknown but probably sinister (some species have an anglerfish-style glowing lure on their dorsal fin). They also have some veyr impressive jaws, with extremely long needle-teeth. The viperfish actually needs to have specialized "sheathes" in its upper jaw so that it doesn't stab its own brain every time it closes its mouth. They can also open thei mouth ridiculously wide, due to the connection between the skull and spine being very flexible. In a paper last year it was also shown that one species of viperfish is probably the blackest thing found in nature, withs its body absorbing 99,99 % of the light hitting it. Unlike many deep sea fish, dragon- and viperfish are actually capable of moving at relatively high speed to pursue prey, if only for a short time. They also migrate up the water column during the night to feed on fish closer to the surface.

>>76852732
what book is this?

When do we get the mermaids being fucked by monsters?

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>>76852732
Which book would that be? I'll probably end up buying it as well if I don't own it.

Now, a specific type of Stomiiformid that deserves a special mention is the stoplight loosejaw (Malacosteus niger), which lacks the more serpentine bodyshape dragonfishes tend to have and instead has the largest mouth relative to body size on any fish and jaws that can do...that thing. Whatever you call that, other than nightmarish.
The lower jaw is built so that it can actually spring forward extremely fast to snatch unsuspecting prey without the fish itself having to make a move that might alert the prey. But wait, that's not all! The stoplight loosejaw also comes with another weird trick: it can see and produce red light! That's actually a lot more impressive than it migth seem, as the only other animals on Earth that can do the same are a couple of similar and closely related species of fish, and the larva of one beetle species for some reason. Remember that red light is the first wavelength to be absorbed by water. As a consequence most deep sea animals have lost the ability to even see red. This means that the stoplight loosejaw has little spotlights on its head that only it can see, letting it illuminate a threat or prey while remaining hidden in the darkness.
It also apparently gets the pigment needed to produce the red effect from eating copepods, small crustaceans that themselves get it from their food. I don't know how it eats them given its lower jaw has a hole in the floor to reduce water resistance and it seems the copepods would be able to to just swim out of the hole when it closes its mouth.

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>>76852989
Never. I have a strict policy against drawing any fucking. I also have some other largely arbitary policies that I might seem to violate, but drawing sex scenes is something I'm not at all comfortable with.

Anyway, this thing is also a Stomiiformid, the marine hatchetfish (not to be confused with the freshwater hatchetfish, a completely unrelated fish that just has the same common name). They're small deep sea fish with tall but extremely narrow profile, upwards-facing mouth and eyes for spotting food (generally small invertebrates or pieces of organic debris) from below, and silvery sides and photophores on their underside to mask their outline. They're infamous for looking extremely creepy when viewed from above.

>>76853050
That is really fucking cool.

>>76852960
>>76853050
"Deep Sea Biology" by John D Gage and The "Ecology of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents" by Van Dover
They arent only about fishes tho

>>76853173
>drawing sex scenes is something I'm not at all comfortable with
Monster on mermaid vore when

Post big tummy mermaids

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My personal favorite deep sea fish, for the sheer "does this even count as a bony fish"? weirdness is the gulper eel. It's probably easier to list all the things they they don't have compared to regular fish: scales, swim bladder, ribs, most fins, a lot of bones...It's pretty much just an enormous gaping mouth and huge stomach, with the minimal amount of parts needed to keep it together and alive. I find there's a certain...purity of purpose in that. Anything unnecessary has been discarded to save energy.
Gulper eels (Saccopharynx) and the related pelican eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides) also have a few odd traits no other fish has, like different kind of muscle structure (V-shaped muscle fibers instead of W-shaped) and genetic markers found on no other animals.
The two are similar in many ways but have some notable distinctions: pelican eel has a large mouth relative to body size, a body that seem to just taper from mouth to tail, no teeth, a dorsal fin that starts closer to the front end, and a smaller and non-elastic stomach. Gulper eels have teeth, a more distinct head, body, and tail, a dorsal fin that starts at the base of the tail, and the ability to swallow far larger prey. They're also larger. They're actually very long, but most of the length is the long whiplike tail, which ends in a luminous bulb that's probably used to lure prey.
I've only pretty recently seen footage of Saccopharyngid fish alive in their natural habitat, and I was surprised that they can actually fold up that huge mouth so that they look much more like a normal eel until the mouth opens. Also, like normal eels it's assumed they die shortly after mating.

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There's acctually a third genus of Saccopharyngiformes fish, that while not as impressive looking and lacking the "underwater vore hell" cred, is even weirder. The onejaws are small white eels that are among the most deepest living fish known. Their eyes, olfactory organs, and their senses in general, are atrophied, and as the name implies they only have one jaw. They completely lack any upper jaw bones, but still have one tooth growing right out of the braincase. Also, that tooth is venomous, because I guess it wouldn't be weird enough otherwise. They seem to feed on small invertebrates, and it's assume they ram them with the venomous tooth to kill or stun them.

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Here's the posterchild for the underwater vore-hell, and seemingly the fan favorite when it comes to the mermaids, the black swallower (Chiasmodon niger), aka. the horrible vore-fish. While swallowing prey your own size is part of the standard deep sea fish template, the swallowers (there are actually other species, as well as a related genus named after the Hindu goddess Kali, whose species are all named after swords, though C. niger is by far the most famous) are the best example, specialized for eating relatively large bony fish and able to swallow prey over twice their own length (one specimen was actually found to have eaten a fish four times its own length, though that seems to have been too much, as the head of the fish broke through the stomach wall and killed the swallower). They bite on the tail of the fish and "walk" their jaws up the body until the prey is fully swallowed. Sometimes the swallowed fish is so large it starts to decompose before being digested, and the resulting gasses lift the swallower to the surface where it dies. This is actually how most specimens of the fish has been collected.
The swallowers are actually quite closely related to the common perch and seabass. This makes them somewhat unusual in the deep sea, as most deep sea fish are of considerably older lineages of fish, probably because not much has changed in the deep sea for tens of millions of years, so the descendants fish that got there first are still dominant there.

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>>76852063
I follow this channel for deep sea creatures.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzXpJub6qs5O8OT-xYgiIOA

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An example of a fish recently adapted to deep sea life is the fangtooth, or ogrefish, whose closest relatives are all surface water fish. It still has small scales and a more robust body, indicating it hasn't yet fully adapted to deep sea life. This also allows it to survive in captivity for several months instead of expiring withing hours at best. The fangtooth also has some impressive fangs as the name implies, which are actually the longest on any animal relative to body size. Like viperfish, it requires specialised adaptions to not stab its brain whenever it closes its mouth. I also has odd mucus-filled structures on its head, whose purpose is unknow.

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Anglerfish are not the only deep sea fish with extreme sexual dimorphism. If fact, it's pretty common for males of deep sea fish to have enlarged sensory organs and reduced jaws, with many dying after mating. Other species are hermaphrodites and don't have separate males and females.
The whalefish (Cetomimidae) were only identified to be one species with the advent of DNA analysis. Before that the larval stage, the male, and the female were assume to be distinct species.
Like many deep sea fish, the larvae live closer to surface and feed on zooplankton. When they reach sexual maturity, they descend to the deep sea and undergo a metamorphosis. The females turn into flabby red fish with a huge mouth and gill arches that double as additional mouths for sucking food in, with small eyes but multiple pressure-sensitive pores for detecting movement. The male's jaws fuse shut and olfactory organs greatly increase in size. He now relies on the energy store in his liver, as well as digesting the shells of the invertebrates he ate during the larval stage still left in his stomach, in order to live long enough to find a female and mate with her.

>>76852063
>mermaids are increasing in artistic quality
I love you, you crazy fishy bastard.

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The telescopefish (Gigantura chuuni, not to be confused with the telescope fish, which is again a completely unrelated fish with the same common name, only spelled with a space) is a midwater fish that displays a trait present in many such fish, larger tubular eyes. While in some species they face up to detect thing above them on the telescopefish they face directly forward, which would give the fish binocular vision, useful for judging distance to prey. For some reason they also have an extremely long tail lobe that can be as long as the rest of the body. They also possess an elastic stomach that lets them swallow large prey, and have been found to have swallowed dragonfish, which they share a habitat with, which are longer than the telescopefish (without accounting for the tailfin).

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>>76854318
Actually that's a pretty old picture, I just added more mermaids. I rarely do vector drawings because it's quite cumbersome and actually ends up looking worse than hand drawing to me, as at least with the hand drawing the sketchiness is excusable and they also look less flat.

Anyway, here's a picture of a collected telescopefish specimen that seems to have become a minor meme (I've seen it posted a few times on /tg/ with filename like "if only you knew how bad things really are"). Note the distended stomach: the fish has swallow a relatively large prey animal before being caught.

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The giant oarfish (Regalescus glesne) is the longest bony fish in the world, at over 8 m, and probably the inspiration of mythical sea serpents. They normally live in the mesopelagic zone and ones seen on surface are generally dead or dying animals. It seems that in the natural habitat they float with their body held vertically, but switch to holding the body horizontally and swimming by undlating their long dorsal fin when approached too close by an RV. Presumably the former is their feeding posture, keeping their mouth pointed up to catch zooplankton they feed on.

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This anglerfish's lure looks like a tiny fish.

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[laughing deep sea bitches.gif]

Cookicutter sharks are small sharks that feed by taking bites from large animals like whales and bigger sharks with their huge teeth. They leave round holes in the animal's skin, which is where the name comes from (though "icecream scoop shark" would really be a more accurate name given how they scoop chunks from the animal). They have photophores on their underside, which may be used to lure animals to them. There's actually been few cases where a cookicutter shark may have bitten a swimmer while coming closer to surface during the night. There's also a famous case of one biting the soft plastic cover protecting the sensors of a USN nuclear submarine, forcing it to return to dock to have the components replaced, making it probably the most costly damage done by a single fish.

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>>76853295
Thanks. Decided to order the first book you mentioned on Amazon (luckily UK Amazon had it, as ordering from US would've been way too expensive because of the shipping). I'm mostly interested in fish biology anyway, so not covering invertebrates doesn't really bother me.

That's it for today, as I'm going to bed. I might continue tomorrow.

I always love these threads and look forward to them. The ocean is a terrifying hell.

>>76855260
Angler on the far right is simply fabulous

>>76856555
Can't even remotely compete with Team Wiiiide, though.

>>76857462
Team wide is enthusiastic and confident but not fabulous

>>76852063
So, we have this sci-fi setting in which humans have begun to mine the ocean floor. How could this affect the deep sea? They even got underwater colonies in the twilight zone filled with cyborgs, genetically engineered parahumans/bioroids and uplifts. But the mines themselves are mostly operated by machines.

Hooray! HDSM guy is back to give me more reasons not to go into the ocean.
>>76854700
Is this a new addition to these threads? I think this is the first time hearing about these.

>>76858452
I can't agree to this. There's nothing more fabulous than cuteness.

I love these threads. They are one of the best parts of modern /tg/

>>76853757
>Tooth growing out of it's brain case
So, it's like the unicorn of gulper eels?

...actually, what is the difference between a horn and a tooth that grows out of a skull?

>>76860744
Teeth and horns are structurally very different. A horn is a bony growth with keratin on the outside, while a tooth is...well, a tooth. It's made of dentine, rather than keratin. Think about the difference between ivory (tusks) and horn (horn) as materials.
Though, interestingly enough, if you look at most depictions of unicorns, their "horns" tend to be ivory-esque in appearance, rather than matching the keratin coloration of their hooves, and protrude from the wrong part of the skull to be a true horn. Given some of the tooth migration we see in other ungulates, it's entirely possible that a unicorn's "horn" is actually just an extreme example of a migrated tusk.

>>76853957
>the resulting gasses lift the swallower to the surface where it dies
That's the weirdest last resort I've ever seen. The deep sea is one hell of a place to live.

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The scaly-foot gastropod (which has apparently become endangered since the last time I checked) is a weird little motherfucker. This guy is, to my knowledge, the only animal that incorporates actual iron deposits into its structural components--the shell itself has a layer of iron, and the little armored scales on its foot are also made of iron sulfides. It lives at the base of black smokers in the Indian Ocean and is a symbiotroph.

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>>76861250
Another angle of a scaly-foot weirdo. The much blacker coloration here lets you see him poking out between the scales and the shell.

I had a nightmare recently where I was trapped in the ocean below the ice on Titan (I think it's Titan) and it was pretty much the worst thing I've experienced while asleep. Only time I've ever woken up sweating with my heart racing. I didn't even know I could feel such intense panic in my sleep

>>76853620
I wonder if gulper eels evolved all those things away or just... never evolved them in the first place and are just a really, really, REALLY old lineage of fish. Presumably there's genetic evidence that disproves this given that we have a fucking body but still.

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https://neal.fun/deep-sea/

I only saw this webpage recently and thought it was cool so I'm sharing it here.

On another note, when it comes to horrors of the sea, crinoids are some of the more mesmerizing and eldritch things out there.

>>76855096
That wasn't one case. It was multiple. The US navy actually has anti-cookiecutter shark measures on the sensor covering of their subs now just to deal with these fuckers.

>>76858674
There's been some experiments in mining manganese nodules from the seafloor in the 1960s, which, along with suphide minerals from volcanic vent fields, are the subject of interest for seafloor mining. The nodes were collected by pulling a dredger along the ocean floor, leaving channels of disrupted sediment behind.
Even after over 50 years, the areas have not returned to their natural state. Given how slowly sediment accumulates in the deep sea (the nodules themselves take millions of years to grow and the sediment accumulation seems to occur at similar speeds), those scars on the ocean floor will probably outlast our civilization. Nodule fields cover only a small percentage of the seafloor, but they have higher than average biodiversity due to the nodules serving as a solid surface for mollusk and sponges species that can't live in the soft mud to cling onto, so their destruction will negatively effect the local ecosystem even if globally the effect is minor.
The dust kicked up by the dredging will also smother bottom-dwelling animals, which can be an issue if a lot of dust is produced and it spread very far, though the long-term effects are probably smaller (if the area was already covered with sediment, adding some more on top of it doesn't really change the habitat, so animals from further out can just recolonize the area).

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>>76862578
They seem to be a derived suborder of true eels (for a long time it was assumed that they were assume to be unrelated to true eels and have independently evolved a similar body shape), that based on genetic evidence have branched off from their last common ancestor with other eels at 90 million years ago. Which geologicall speaking is pretty old but not all that old (sharks for example have been around far longer). Loss of features like scales and swim bladder is common on deep sea fish, though I have no idea why Saccopharyngoidei have had their myomeres change from W-shaped to V-shaped, as literally no other specis of fish ever discovered, even other deep sea fish, has this trait. They're also weird on genetic level, displaying some unique changes in their genome no other animal has.
So clearly somethign really weird happened at some point in the evolution of the gulper eels, and we don't know exactly what or why yet.

>>76863379
Yeah, that's not that long at all in the grand scheme of things. Though I wouldn't be surprised if that theory wasn't thrown around at some point that they were the descendants of some really early body fish that survived by going deep into the ocean

>>76862314
I think Europa is the one with maybe-liquid water

>>76855260
I love them....

>>76863487
Europa, Enceladus, and possibly some others. Titan has seas of liquid methane.

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>>76856555
She's supposed to be a hairy seadevil, which has long filaments all over its body, which based on footage seem to have bioluminescence or at least reflect light.

>>76852063
>>76855260
>>76863756

Why do the mermainds have tits when threy have no nipples?

>>76864169
It's a mystery.

How have people used the abyss in their games? I have a high fantasy city based around warring parasite, hydrothermal vent and whalefall scavenger ecologies. The whale in question is only half dead and many of its organs are inhabited by human settlers, the defining sight of the city would be the spire punching out through its blowhole and spewing black smoke.

>>76862633
Crinoids are interesting in that they were first know from fossils and assumed to be extinct, until they were discovered to be alive and well in the deep sea. Turns out they only disappeared from shallower waters. There's some other similar examples: the vampire squid is actually neither a squid or an octopus, but a different type of cephalopod whose ancestors' fossils are found in rocks that formed in shallow waters but which now only survives in the oxygen minimum zone, having been replaced with modern squids and octopuses elsewhere.

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I'm back, though before we return to regularly schedueled programming, I though I'd share a few random things related to some images I have.

William Bebbe was a naturalist/ornithologist/entomologist/marine biologist/explorer/inventor/author who together with engineer Otis Barton built the first bathysphere and became the first living men to descend to the depth of half a mile. Beebe made several obervations during his bathysphere dives that were initially dismissed by "proper" marine biologists (Beebe himself didn't actually have a degree in biology: he had studied biology but dropped out when he got a permanent job working for the Bronx zoo), some of them have since been confirmed. He also described multiple fish that he saw during his dives, hiring an artist to draw them and giving them scientific names. This was highly controversial as to officially name a species you need a physical reference speciment, called a holotype. Only in recent years, with advancement in high-definition photography and remotely controlled vehicles has description of species without a physical specimen gained some acceptance.
The most notable of the observed animals were two large fish that Beebe described as approaching very close to the bathysphere and circling around it, which let him take a good look at them. His description includes traits that are common on Stomiiformid fish, like a long body, rows of photophores on the underside, large teeth, and a barbell on its chin, but also another long filament near the tail which is not something known Stomiiformids have. By his estimation the fish were also very large, around the lenght of a man, which would make the gigantic compared to other Stomiiformids.
None of the species described by Beebe on his dives are considered valid taxons, and none have been observed or collected by other scientists, but given how little we have explored of the deep sea it's hard to say for sure whether they exist or not.

>>76863202
You could built a containment
barrier that covers the seabed to prevent disturbed sediment from escaping and clouding the water. This would avert the disruption of the benthic ecosystem.

>>76866067
If you actually went down there instead of just dredging from the surface, you could just pluck the nodules from the seafloor (they're literally just laying there) without disrupting the surroundings. But the nodules themselves are important to the local ecosystem.

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Another random note. Looking for pictures of deep sea fish, I've seen basically the same picture of a gulper eel having swallowed another fish pop up in a lot of different books. It's not the same picture, but similar enough that it's clear the artists were copying each other or the same original source. One picture actually had a citation under it that stated it had been drawn base on a drawing by somebody called Günther, but turns out that wasn't the original, either. The original picture in fact comes all the way from the original report of the HMS Challenger expedition in1870s. This is the original illustration from the report.
Sadly, this turned out not to be all that useful. I had hoped the primary source would contain some more information, like what species of fish had the eel eaten and how large it was (I've seen multiple sources mention gulper eels can swallow fish bigger than themselves, but never actually any citation on it). Turns out the accompanying text just says "this specimen had swallowed a large fish, which is partially visible through the distended gill slit". Gee, thanks, I could see that from the drawing already.

>>76852063
I love your info dumps, but do you have any suggestions on how to work this with TTRPGS?
Anything really, campaign premise, NPCs, underwater dungeons, monsters based on real critters, how deep sea diving would affect exploration.

>>76864169
Tradition

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To properly explore the underwater vore-hell and meet it's wonderful inhabitants, you need a ship or suit.
Hard shell diving suits do not have the problem of decompression sickness, so if one could be made to withstand the pressure you could walk about in the magical land of eternal night.
Or you could use a sub like a normal person but suits are cooler because tool use.

>>76866841
>hard shell diving suits
Is this an actual thing?

>>76866851
https://youtu.be/CgTr0myRsbs
Yes, although for whatever reason people prefer soft suits. Hard shell suits were actually fairly common in the 1900s though.

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Since people were talking about ancient animals still living in the deep sea, here's another example. The frilled shark is a very primitive (technically the proper them is "basal") shark, possessing traits modern sharks lack, such as a more eel-like body, fringed gill-slits instead of the holes behind the eyes sharks typically have (the gills-slits are what gives the shark its name), and jaws that are directly articulated to the cranium. The species itself isn't actually particularly old, but is practically identical in anatomy to species from the Mesozoic era, with some scientists considring it a direct descendand of a group of sharks that first appeared in the Devonian period, where fish first evolved.
The frilled shark has some really odd looking arrangement of teeth, with multiple patches of rows of thee-pronged backward-pointing teeth that may help it in snagging the tentacles of cephalopods, which make up the bulk of its diet, though it also eats other fish, and has been known to swallow prey more than half its own size. It's also quite large for a deep sea fish at 2 m length.

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>>76866605
There’s a 3rd party thing for Pathfinder called “Cerulean Seas” which has pretty good rules for underwater d&D style combat and adventuring. Has a bunch of other splat books, including one for the lightless abyss. It’s more high fantasy (except all underwater) than thelassophobic horror, but you could use it as the baseline. Has some nice bits about how entirely aquatic societies work, too.>>76852063

>>76866908
>The frilled shark has some really odd looking arrangement of teeth
Isn't there one shark jaw fossil that's basically a circular saw?

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>>76852063

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>>76866908
And here's what the teeth look like.

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>>76866912
I fucked up the image, here is one that has more than 10 pixels.

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>>76866883
Here is one next to a classic diving suit. They're about to go down to the Lusitania and laugh at all the funny dead people.

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>>76866925
Yes, the Helicoprion, a Devonian fish which is technically more similar to a chimaera than a shark, though bot are cartilageous fishes. Took us forever to figure how the damn jaw is actually supposed to work, and I still regularly see it reconstructed wrong, including at the local aquarium.

>>76866988
>Took us forever to figure how the damn jaw is actually supposed to work
Wait, do we actually know now?

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does life in underwater caves share any similarities with deep ocean life?
and on a similar note, are there any deep ocean cave systems?

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>>76867396
>falling for the Deepwater Jew's sign tricks

>>76867461
oh shit treasure?
See you anons later I'm gonna go get rich.

>>76866420
Actually, with further research I was able to track the passage in the Challenger report that the plate refers to (not very easy as there's 32 volumes on the report zoology, and while they are freely available online, the website I found with them in pdf form didn't specify which volume covered what, forcing me to open them one by one until I found the one on deep sea fish. It's vol. 22, by the way), and that one actually contained the proper report.
According to it, one gulper eel specimen of 14'' body length was found to have swallowed a fish of 10'' length, and another of 8,5'' body length had swallowed a fish of 9'' length. A large, 20'' specimen had been found eaten a fish of "about 7'' in circumference", though no lenght was given. So there you go, a primary source. About as primary as you can get, considering it's from the Challenger expedition itself.

>>76867396
>are there any deep ocean cave systems?
The sea floor is formed from basalt erupted from the mid-ocean rifts, so it's pretty much flat volcanic rock except for the occasional volcanic mountains or plateues. Also I don't think eruptions underwater can form similar hollow lava tubes that sometimes form on land so that option is probably out as well. Probably the closest to a cave you can find will be cracs and crevasses on the rocks, but nothing really expansive, at least at the scale humans could navigate (hydrothermal vents are actually fed by extensive network of water-filled cracks, but they're generally only a few millimeters wide).

>>76852300
I think it's kind of funny that fish circles around to being almost normal at the deepsea bottom.

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>>76867832
Fish weirness increases with depth, but it hits stack overflow before you reach the bottom and loops back to normal.

It's actually because ultimately the ocean floor is a pretty similar environment whether the depth is 200 or 4000 meters. The higher pressure in the deep requires some specialized adaptions, and there's less nutrients, but at least there is a ready source of organic matter (all the stuff covering the seafloor, which is largely the organic waste and remains of dead plants and animals from higher up in the water column) that sustains a community of microbes and invertebrates that larger animals can feed on. There's no need to evolve the ability to swallow fish your own size whole when you can just eat worms and stuff like a normal fish.
Though some deep seafloor fish are still weird. Like the tripodfish, which perches itself slightly above the seafloor with its fins, that through unknown means can change from rigid to soft depending on whether it's standing on the seafloor or swimming.

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>>76867962
>uuuuuuuullllllaaaaaa!

>>76867962
>that through unknown means can change from rigid to soft
I dunno, I think I might be familiar with that particular phenomenon.

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I briefly mentioned chimaeras as the fish the Helicoprion is related to, but didn't really elaborate on what they are. Also known as ghost sharks or ratfish, they're an order of cartilageous fish like sharks and rays, though less well known due to living at greater depth. They have a weird "stitched together" look due to lines of pores all over their bodies, which are used to sense movement by registering changes in water pressure. They also have large eyes and a bioelectricity sense like many sharks and rays. Also, they have a venomous spine on their dorsal fin. The name "chimera" apparently comes from them seeming to have a hodgepodge of random features from different kinds of fish.

>>76868479
Jesus. Fish really just don't care how they look, huh?

>>76868154
I mean, you'd think it'd be hydraulics, but apparently it's not. Or at least no hydraulic system has been found in the fins.

>>76852063

Being following your stuff on DA for years! Great to see more of the Horrible Deep Sea!

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I feel like posting some more mermaids. They seem to be popular.

>>76868763
Does that make a marine snowman a fleshman?

>>76868787
Was it pelican or gulper that showed up on the Nautilus feed? I seem to recall they got it wrong, but I'm not an expert.

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Back to regularly schedueled programming.
Turns out underwater vore hell applies to things other than fish as well. Tunicates (which strangely enough are some of the closest relatives to vertebrates: their larvae have a brain and a notochord, which is the precursor of a vertebrate's spine, but they lose them when they reach adulthood and become sessile) are normally filter-feeders similar to sponges, straining out nutrients and microbes from the water than passes through ther bodies, but some deep sea tunicates function in a manner similar to carnivorous plants, trapping small invertebrates to digest them.

>>76868872
More like a poopman.

>>76868894
Pelican eel. You can tell from the larger head and no abdominal pouch.

>>76868904
You can't just post pictures of otomatones and pretend that they're real animals.

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Laravl dragonfish have theis eyes at the end of long stalks for some reason. Technically the eyestalks still exist in the adult, they're just curled up into a spiral at the back of the eyesocket.

>>76869195
Do they get their eyes tangled up like headphones?

there's a DA? link please.

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>>76866841
>>76866883
More weird old diving suits.

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>>76869592
https://www.deviantart.com/elder-thing/gallery/64616122/horrible-deep-sea-stuff

Goblin sharks are another weird-looking deep sea shark that's a last remainder of a lineage dating back to the time of the dinosaurs, when its ancestors used to be found in shallower waters as well. The genus modern goblin shark belongs to has been around for for 40 million years or so. They're primarily found on the slops of continental shelves and seamounts, but have been known to dive to depths of over a kilometer. Their name is actually a not very good translation from their Japanese name, which means tengu shark, after a mythical bird-man yokai with a long and pointy nose. The goblin shark's "nose" has a large amount of electricity receptors that can be used to located prey. Its jaws are covered with hok-like teeth and can extend forward.
Their maximum size was assumed to be about 3 m, which is pretty big, but in 2000 an individual about 6 m long was caught, showing that they can get far larger than anybody had anticipated.

>>76869899
This is just some Jules Verne shit, right? Nobody ever actually went down there with a broadsword and an axe?

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>>76870082
>6 m long goblin shark

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Oh god you weren't lying
WHY WEREN'T YOU LYING

>>76870082
>>76870264
>Deep sea fish look scary but they're actually too small to harm people
>6 m goblin sharks exist
I don't want to live on this planet anymore

>>76868763
>>76868776
>>76868787
anon
you?
are amazing
i hope you will have a bright future as an artist
your ideas?
GENIUS

>>76867461
>sign trying way too hard to convince you to go in
Wouldn't that just scare you away?

>>76866951
>>76866883
>Yes, although for whatever reason people prefer soft suits.
Couple reasons. It's almost impossible to do work in one (space suits are hard enough as it is). And if an old-school hard suit springs a leak and you fuck up, it can send the diver back up to the boat through his pressure coupling. Modern hard suits would likely be a lot safer, but still have the work issue compared to just using robotic arms on a minisub.

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This is a tonquefish, which is a type of flounder. Not a particularly noteworthy looking fish, until you realise its hanging out on a hot sulfur crust of an underwater volcanic spring. Most other animals would die from exposure to the toxic chemicals from being anywhere near the place, indeed the fish actually feed on bodies of fish that try to swim over the sulfur lake and are poisoned to death.
Apart from a higher than average rate of deformities, the tonguefish seem to be doing fine in an environment that is deadly to almost every other animal.

>>76870136
I can't speak for swords but if you want to get inside a wreck an axe seems like it would always handy to have.

>>76871363
The sword is obviously for dueling any skeleton pirates or merfolk he may encounter while exploring the wreck.

>>76871363
Underwater? You'd do better with a crowbar.

>>76870915
oh yeah mythbusters did a thing about diving suits that fuck up. Not exactly the same but still similar.
https://youtu.be/LEY3fN4N3D8

>>76871363
The thicker medium would offer great resistance to slashes, you'd be better off thrusting so only the tip displaces water.

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>>76871392
I'll meet you half way and use a pry-axe

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I'm heading off for the night. I can continue tomorrow, but I'm kind of starting to run out of material.
Before that, though, I thought I'd dumpt the one time I did an actual storyline with the deep sea mermaids. It really wasn't worth the effort, though.

>part 1/4

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>>76871640
>Part 2/4
Suddenly skeletons.

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>>76871667
>Part 3/4
picture 30 was a random unrelated one so the numbering skips to 31.

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>>76871685
>Part 4/4
Probably some of the more technically complex art I did, that is to say I actually tried making backgrounds and perspective. These took a lot of time and like I said, it really wasn't worth all the effort.

>>76870814
You have to think like an adventurer.

>>76872270
So what, assume it's a double-bluff?

>>76871221
Wasn't a shark found INSIDE an underwater volcano at some point?

>>76872374
Exactly. Only a great fool would advertise their treasure and expect nobody would go after it, so it must obviously be a trap. But only an even greater fool would make a trap so obvious, so it must obviously be a cunning ploy to keep the treasure safe with minimal effort.

>>76868043
Don't ask how I know but the thunder child is going to win p

>>76873210
F

Anyone got the copy pasta of the abyssal mermaid joining adventurers on a quest?

>>76864169
Same predation tactic as the anglerfish
Different approach

>>76874243
Worth it.

>>76871714
I had my fun.

>>76871714
>Probably some of the more technically complex art I did
>really wasn't worth all the effort
Pushing boundaries is one of the best ways to improve at something, so trying it at all is always worth it.

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>>76853050
Oh, that rabbit hole goes deeper. The eye-pigment loosejaws use is regular old chlorophyll, which of course is green because it's really good at absorbing red light. Apparently the fish eat copepods that have eaten algae during their daily trips to the sea surface, and then transfer the modified chlorophyll into their eyes. As for prey capture, loosejaws seem to pierce their prey rather than relying on suction like other deep sea fish, and their "open" jaws reduce drag to allow a faster bite on copepods. They probably need the speed because copepods are famously 'jumpy' animals, shorter jaws might not be enough to catch them reliably. At least that's what I could get from skimming, check out 'Exploring feeding behaviour in deep-sea dragonfishes (Teleostei: Stomiidae): jaw biomechanics and functional significance of a loosejaw' for details.

Also read Anko-san of the Deep Sea Fish if you haven't, the entire series is gold. Main character is a football anglerfish, and in the later volumes there's a frilled shark mermaid, a deep sea smelt mermaid, a pearlfish mermaid (does she try to go into the main girl's anus? yes, yes she does) and cusk eel and coelacanth mermaids who seem to be an item. You'll need the raws though, some of the best chapters are untranslated. There was even a character design contest I'll always regret not entering.

Another suggestion is reading up more on deep sea invertebrates, which are almost more exciting than the fish. Deep sea is a kind of time capsule for a lot of living fossils that went extinct on the surface, like sea lilies, armored forams, glass sponges and brachiopods, and I think even the last trilobites were deep-sea forms. There's also aberrant stuff like benthic ctenophores, benthic siphonophores (these are really cute, they're like tiny underwater hot air balloons), pelagic sea cucumbers and predatory sponges. One of these sponges, Cladorhiza, was even mistaken for an alien artifact dubbed the Eltanin Antenna.

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Here's the third best page of Anko-san.

Incidentally, I think the world's only commensal sea cucumber was found near the anal fin of an anglerfish. Since pearlfish live in sea cucumbers, I guess this is apropos in a roundabout way?

>>76855096
Fuck these bastards in particular

>>76876264
>Anko-san of the Deep Sea Fish
I had stuff I needed to do tonight before you so rudely robbed me of an hour and a half of my time.

There's a webm I used to see posted around called something like "Smug Bag" or something with some kind of bizarre water....well, bag things eating each other. Anyone know what that's about? I'll see if I can find it in the archives.

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>>76877923
Beroid comb jelly is my guess. They eat other ctenophores, including smaller beroids.

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>>76877923
It's a beroid comb jelly eating another comb jelly.
Comb jellies are interesting in that while they look kind of like jellyfish they're not at all related. In fact, there's some evidence they diverged from the common ancestor of all other animals (except sponges, which are probably the oldest type of animal) really early on. One reason is that while other animals use the same set of hormones (adrenaline, dopamine, etc.), implying those must have developed early in the evolution of life, ctenophores like comb jellies have their own unique ones, so they must've diverged from all other animals before those hormones developed.

>>76879525
Rip to that other dude, that was quick

>>76879525
How come only one actually tries to eat the other? Wouldn't they both go for it?

>>76880988
I think the other jelly is one of the filter-feeding ones, which most comb jellies are. Beroids specialise in eating other comb jellies, though I think they also eat small fish and the like.
Comb jellies are actually a big problem in the Black Sea, where they've been accidentally introduced by ship ballast waters. They breed rapidly and eat all the plankton and fish larvae. I think at one point people were considered importing beroids to eat the other jellies, but then you'd need some way to get rid of the beroids.

>>76881099
>where they've been accidentally introduced by ship ballast waters.
Wait, what?
>but then you'd need some way to get rid of the beroids.
Well, that's obviously why you swallow a fly.

>>76867461
LUL

>>76881160
It's actually very common for invasive species to be introduced through ballast waters. Ships that don't have full cargo holds fill ballast tanks with water in order to maintain a proper distribution of weight and keep the ship more stable (if, say, the foremost hold is full but the aftmost is empty the ship would be front-heavy and handle poorly in rough seas). The ballast water gets dumped out when it's not longer needed, which can introduce any animals or plants that were present in the water (usually algae zooplankton, including larvae of various larger animals) into a new environment.

>>76881271
Okay, but ships have to pass through contiguous water to begin with, so wouldn't anything they're carrying be able to make the trip normally?

>>76866908
I don't know why, but that shark makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable

>>76881575
You can get from the Atlantic to the Black Sea but it involved passing through multiple narrow straits, so it's not a trip that animals that rely on ocean currents to spread their larvae instead of actively swimming large distances would be likely to make, especially since the environmental conditions change dramatically along the way. Similarly species that live in coastal waters on one side of the Atlantic wouldn't naturally be able to make it to the opposite coast as there's too much open ocean in the way, but can hitch a ride aboard ships.

>>76881901
Do we have any kind of solution for the ballast water issue? First thought would be that you could boil it while it's in the tanks, but that'd probably be very cost-prohibitive, if not impossible to implement. Killing everything in it chemically is presumably also out because then you'd dump that into the port and kill the things you were trying to protect.

>>76865050
>and their "hold my beer" approach to RNA editing
Oh? I'd not heard of that before.

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I'm back, but I'm starting to run low on material, so I'll probably just be posting some interesting pictures or random facts about some fish and invertebrates that have some neat thing about them.

Also, as per usual, if anybody has some ideas for more mermaid pictures I'm taking them. Though I probably wouldn't be able to finish drawing them while the thread is still up.

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Deep sea vents are pretty well known, as are the mineral resources they contain, but the bulk of those mineral resources are actually in the seafloor rocks under the vents.
The way the vents actually work is that cold seawater seeps into cracks in the volcanic rocks that make up the seafloor, and eventually reaches deep enough that the heat from the astenopshere heats it up to a supercritical level. The hot and high pressurised water dissolves minerals from the surrounding rock as makes its way back up (hot water, like air, is denser than cold, with the exception of water at 4 C being denser than colder water). As it cools down and pressure decreases, the dissolved elements are deposited as sulphide minerals, with any that make it up to the seafloor precipitating as the "smoke" from the vulcanic vents and forming the vents themselves over time.

Vulcanically hosted massive sulphide deposits, which are majors sources of many metals, are actually ancient undersea vent fields that got smushed between two pieces of continental crust during subduction, exposing the ore veins normally buried beneath the vent fields in the bottom of the ocean.

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Megamouth shark, a large (around 6 m in length) deepwater shark that's a filter feeder. It's not quite a deep sea fish as it seems to spend the day are around the lower edge of the photic zone and goes closer to the surface at night, but it lives deep enough to be rarely seen by humans. Aside from having a big mouth, it has a weird-looking upper lip that's very visible when the mouth is open and is of a bright silvery-white colour. It's been proposed that it's used to lure in food, and may have bioluminescent properties, but this hasn't actually been proven.

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I also like horrible sea monsters.

>>76882946
A comic about the bigfin squid would be pretty cool

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>>76883303
This thing?

>>76862314
Brother. This was not a nightmare. It was a vision.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

>>76883234
Speaking of sea monsters, what do you think of the Con Rit? It's described as a giant marine centipede with hexagonal shells, that could be mistaken for a sea serpent.

>>76883462
It's scary as fuck

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These crustaceans have an odd thing going on where they seem to exhibit more or less sexual dimorphism depending on their lifestyle. They're found both in open waters, where they're solitary, or on slopes of seamounts where they're found in groups. In the open water specimens males and females are the same size, but in the ones that live in groups the females are much larger. The reason seems to be that they reach sexual maturity before reaching full size, and the females tend to eat any smaller males they mate with. When living in a solitary lifestyle the males are more likely to get to a size where the female won't try eating them by the time they mate, but when multiple males and females live in close proximity the males will mate younger and get eaten, while the extra nutrition allows the females to grow larger than their open water counterparts.

>>76883860
>adolescent female shrimp eating their mates
pretty sure that's someone's fetish

>>76883884
>Tags: straight shota, impregnation, vore

>>76862314
>>76863487
Anon was right, it's Europa. People reckon it could have a 30km thick layer of ice on its surface, and below that an ocean a hundred kilometers deep, heated by the tidal forces of Jupiter's gravity.

Who knows what could be living there, far from the Sun, beneath the ice.

>>76852063

I was reading the Rifters Trilogy by Peter Watts when I saw this thread. Pretty based.

>>76884706

The job working on geothermal power generators situated on the ocean floor still strikes me as being really cool. The bonus of having the augmentations that render you impervious to the water pressure and the cold is also a very welcome one.

>>76864169
They're swim bladders

>>76885247
I love how scary these little idiots look, even though they eat trash and their only defense is inflating like a sunburned Kirby.

>>76885592
They also cover themselves up because apparently deep sea predators work on the assumption that if you can't see them they can't see you.

Actually it's pretty clever. They inver the "cloak" between their tentacles over their body, which is black on the inside to make it belnd with its surroundings, then spray ink and pulse their lights in such a way that makes it look like the squid is moving further away, causing the predator to give chase in the direction it thinks the squid escaped to while in reality it didn't move anywhere.

>>76879525
as a neuroscience person I'm really interested in knowing about the comb jelly neurotransmitters, i had never heard of that. I knew there were a few oddballs here and there, but a 100% completely different set of them i hadn't heard of

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>>76886038
I don't remember if they actually have an entirely different set of neurotransmitters, but apparently they don't produce serotonin, dopamine, nitric oxide, octopamine, or, noradrenaline, and in fact completely lack the genes related to their production, which implies they split off from all other animals with a nervous system before those genes evolved. Instead they use L-glutamate as a neurotransmitter, which I don't think other animals do. That and other genetic evidence suggest they may be a sister group to all other animals (I was actually wrong in saying sponges are older: ctenophores probably actually predate sponges, and may be the oldest animal group still alive, having split off from the last common ancestor from all other animals right around time complex multicellular life was evolving).

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Going off again. I'm pretty much out of material at this point, so while I might post some random stuff after work tomorrow I except the thread to fall off the board.
For next thread I should have read the book on deep sea fish I ordered, which will hopefully provide me with some new material.

>>76886286
thats interesting. Also as a side note we do use L glutamate, its the main excitatory neurotransmitter. Maybe it's D they use, which would be interesting to take what is essentially a left turn chemically.

Keep up the good work, the undersea areas are so fascinating due to their isolation and extreme conditions

>>76870264
Jesus, even the guy in the picture can't believe what he's seeing

>>76883042
>hot water, like air, is denser than cold
You mean less dense, surely?

>>76884359
IRL unicorn jelly

>>76885247
These goony motherfuckers

>>76884644
It's a tragedy that they have such short lifes.

>>76891256
It's a blessing. Else they'd rise up against us.

>>76891300
>implying they wouldn't immediately rise above such petty things as world domination and seek psychic enlightenment or something non-interventionist like that

>>76891903
A recent study showed that octopods punch fish for no reason other than spite, so, no, I'm not going to gamble on enlightened cephalopods.

>>76892318
Octopi?

>>76892358
octopodes

>>76886915
Gulper eel is cute

>>76894744
She's a cinnamon bun

My current character is an aquatic elf with the deep sea dweller heritage. Spent the first half of her life down there. This thread is perfect for fluffing out her stories and backgrounds. Thanks OP

>>76895374
Do deep sea aquatic elves get the standard deep sea creature template (bioluminescence, swallow whole, freaky looks)?

Oh hey theres my favorite deep sea mermaids, i should make some art of then if this thread is still up when i get back from work in 12 hours

How would deep pelagic mermaids support advanced brains with the meagre resources of their home? Dot hey raid the epipelagic mermaids at night, taking their shit in a suprise attack and then retreating to depths where those can’t follow? Do they farm tubeworms?

>>76895633
>How would deep pelagic mermaids support advanced brains with the meagre resources of their home?
Deep sea mermaids are dumb as rocks. See >>76886915

Realistically they'd probably have to be migratory midwater mermaids, spending the day in deeper waters to avoid predators and competition, and going up to surface during night to gather food.

>>76895657
They are still smarted the practicaly brainless deepwater fish.

>>76870082
>nineteen fucking feet
>that might not even be their max
>already basically great white sized

>>76895534
Mainly its just some alternate racial traits giving cold resistance and darkvision instead of resistance against sleep etc. and some narrative stuff. It's hard enough to find a gm who let's you play that and get good pictures for aquatic elves in the first place.
one of the little anecdotes she tells is how one of her relatives died from a falling whale skeleton (they float at first but sink to the ground once decayed / devoured sufficiently).
I liked the idea that she'd never seen the sun (or more than 30ft in front of her) for the first 50-60 years and once the surface world opened up she started chasing the horizon. Makes for a very enjoyable, slightly alien PC to play. She gets along surprisingly well with the dwarf and has a passion for roasted food, beeing used to mostly eating things raw. And it's fun pitying the land dwellers for how hard their life sucks for beeing glued to the ground.

>>76895870
Should've given her bioluminescence. It's a cool deep sea fish trait, and wouldn't get you accused of magical realm lie being able to swallow creatures twice her size would.

>>76896061
Definitely a cool trait. Should have thought of that when I made the character, maybe I can squeeze it in retroactively as something maybe a bit dim that people didn't really notice in the usual lighting conditions. Didn't run into magical realm issues so far. The issues with getting such a character approved is more a conglomeration of other factors:
-campaign that is somewhat ocean / costal focused, especially in the beginning to get the character there and have a reason to be invested.
- game balance, the race isn't that OP, but swim speed and some of the other (situational) stuff gets it up to 14 RP which will make GMs quite cautious, especially when mixed with some vanilla races.
-having to play a system/setting with that sorta race available in it
-Snowflake / Magical Realm stuff (not an issue in our group fortunately)

>>76896204
I never understood the appeal of vore desu. I am not gluttonous enough to have a strong emotional attachment to food, and I don't understand what's supposed to be so great about sitting in a tub of acid while suffocating until you die.

>>76896278
From what I've seen it's very rare for people to self-insert as the person getting eaten. Usually they just fap to the girl eating somebody.

>>76896681
How do you feel about unbirth?

>>76896654
This kind of shit is why I don't like swimming.

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>>76886915

>>76896822
having played subnautica and having some pretty major reservations about water (I don't even like rivercraft or standing on a pier), I really wish they'd tried harder to make it scary
like that one bit in SOMA where you're in the no-light zone
that gave me the willies something fierce

>>76896641
But what's the point? For many fetishes you can usually find some twisted way it makes sense (like shit/piss fetishes reduced to a very abstract level are least similar to sex, with the hole "swapping of body fluids" and those things beeing very intimate parts for a human) but what is it with vore? On an abstract level, does it just boil down to "one body goes into other body like sex" or Is it a fetish for fat fucks about the feeling of stuffing your face? But if it's about swallowing food, why does it have to be people? If it was about the taste, you'd chew or something right? Is it about snuff for people who can't stand gore? Or just the sexualized version of gluttony? Or an unholy amalgamation of all of that?

>>76897053
They could've had it so that the abyss is a bit more of a thing, not just an instant death, but that there's a few more steps in the plateau in places, or caves that end there, and a few porches so to speak where you can just look out on to it. Maybe a biome like the floating islands too.
Doesn't necessarily need anything scary there, but it's always a good scene to just stand at the edge of that cliff and to stare out into the dark ocean.

>>76897299
The first thing you have to realise about vore is there is no one reason and it's often some mix of

Intimacy
Dominance/power
Permanence/finality
Belly/gravid/fat
Taboo breaking
Scat/piss
Humiliation
etc

Depending on the individual voraphile it can range from wanting the intimacy of a harmless belly hug to power tripping on the idea of reducing people to food

>>76897482
That's just the core explanation for all paraphilias

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>>76882377
Sea should belong to the strongest

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>>76895596
Nice, I hope the thread stays up until then. I like it when people draw fan art of the mermaids, because it invariably ends up looking better than my art.
Though in this picture the artist screwed up the proportions of Black Swallower. She's supposed to be considerably shorter than the other mermaids so she should have a larger head in proportion to her body, as well as smaller breasts.

>>76899842
Is there an "official" height chart or something for the mermaids?

>>76900626
No, though I could draw one. Wouldn't be all that useful, as I can barely keep them on-model for two consecutive panels, though.

Rather than specific size, I tend to think of the mermaids relative to each other. Of the 4 "main" mermaids, measude from hips up (measuring from head to tail is kind of pointless because Dragonfish's fish half and Gulper Eel's tail are so long), Black Swallower is by far the shortest, and her head should be at around chest-level of the others. Gulper Eel and Dragonfish are somewhat taller than Anglerfish, with Dragonfish tallest by a slight margin.
In terms of breast size, Black Swallower is the smallest (I tend to accidentally draw he breasts bigger than I feel they should be because I'm bad that drawing breasts and find them easier to draw if they're bigger), followed by Anglerfish and Dragonfish. Gulper Eel has largest boobs by a wide margin.

I'll gladly answer other random questions regarding Horrible Deep Sea Mermaid canon. In fact, I've for a long time wanted to do one of those things where people could submit questions and the artist draws the characters answering them.

>>76893078
There's no "more" or "less" correct, just correct and incorrect. Octopodes and octopuses are both correct.

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>>76902169
IIRC writing guidelines for English language prefer the use of English pluralisation of loanwords, though using the original language's is not grammatically incorrect.

Also, I did a picture with the Magnapinna squid as anon requested.

>>76883341
I love this video because you have the rough looking HUD, the ghastly green light and the camera takes time to adjust to the squid so for a few seconds it looks like it's zooming around like an anime character. And right at the end you get the pan across its alien ass tentacles.

Does vore mermaid also puff up like a puffer as a self defense?

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>>76903880
Gulper eel does it for the same reason the real animal does it: we don't know why. (The actual eel is actually a pelican eel, but the Nautilus channelm mistitled the video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT_EMKl2A3Y

>>76891256
It’s probably an adaptation to their silly RNA editing system. They die before faulty proteins produced by transalting incorrectly edited RNA accumulate enough to disrupt gamete production.

That’s just a guess | am not an octopus expert or a molecular biologist.

>>76904143
The eel could be doing it for somehting as simple as to stretch its muscles but my guess is self defense. Everytime we see footage of the creature, there is large camera nearby and the eel probably considers it a potential predator. Some sea mammals can dive deep enough to prey on the eel.

>>76885228
Is that a Dumbo Octopus?
It's scientifically adorable

>>76903777
Nice I notice that you also made giant isopod a rather dapper fellow

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>>76896989
That one kinda reminds me of this image.

>>76899842
Now THAT'S a big tummy

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>>76852063
I am obligated to post this.

>>76909653
Yo what the fuck

>>76910371
>he doesn't have sea louse dna

>>76906192
I've seen it called the flapjack octopus, but I'm pretty sure it's the same thing. It doesn't yet have an officially agreed upon common name as far as I know. The scientific species name is "adorablis", which is Latin for adorable, so it is indeed scientifically proven to be adorable. Scientists are not sure why it is so adorable, though I posit it's a form of protection: no predator wants to eat it because it's so cute.

>>76906577
The dapper isopod's made a few appearances, including a one panel cameo in the storyline comic posted earlier. The submarine in that picture is also supposed to be the same as in that one (I guess they got lost on their way to Lorient).

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This thread reminds me, I need to finish reading The Scar. For some reason I just stopped after the part with the mosquito people.

>>76904381
I suppose pretending you're a chain chomp is an effective form of deterrent.

>>76909624
I've seen bigger.

>>76914836
>I've seen bigger.
Prove it.

>>76913313
It's great, I loved all the Bas-Lag books

>>76852300
>sensitive eyes
Kek

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I went and drew a height chart for the mermaids. Though to be honest details like height are pretty loose when it comes to them. It's more how big they are in relation to each other.

>>76915894
Not that anon, but I'm pretty sure I've drawn them bigger at times. At least Black Swallower, as it's kind of her whole thing.

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>>76915894

>>76919910
>swallow a cow whole
The anti-piranha

>>76913313
Yeah, that book was pretty heavy on the abyssopelagic horror. The craymen, Tanner Sack, the avanc, the fucking grindylow...good stuff.

>>76885228
Aww, he's a shy li'l guy!

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words i wrote elsewhere

>>76924012
Saving this for later, thanks.

>>76870082
Does that fish the shark is swallowing look like a dick to anyone else?

>>76928080
Well it does NOW.

>>76925765
np

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>>76852668
>read Starfish
>struck with an odd longing to be a rifter
>this thread appears in the catalogue
Unfortunately the book is only tangentially related because it's very much about the human element of augmented deep-sea divers in a claustrophobic environment for long periods of time instead of the wildlife or sea at large.

>>76866908
Frilles sharks always freak me out

>>76918761
Ah yes, my favourite character: Human Diver.

>>76930705
better or worse than Holy Diver?

(he's been down too long in the midnight sea)

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>>76930705
Mine too.

Honestly though, diving suits are plenty easy to make spooky. You could easily hide something unnatural or inhuman inside them, maybe something like that real life parasite that zombifies crabs. Something to consider for homebrewing...

>>76931746
I know it's cheesy, but I'm an absolute sucker for an ancient, forgotten diving suit coming UP from the depths, its hose stretching back into the water, only inky blackness behind the window....with an occasional hint of light reflecting off of a tooth.

I am a terrible artist but need drawing practice.
Would it be biting style to start also drawing deep sea mermaids?

>>76931746
>>76932092
This all reminds me of a character from a book called Unlondon or something like that who was a colony of fish living inside an old diving suit

>>76932242
It's not like I own the concept of deep sea mermaids, though it at some point kind of became my "thing".

>>76855096
They were screwing with Soviet submarines during the Cold War too aren't they?

Both sides thought the other was up to some mind bending shenanigans until they figured out it was the cookie cutter shark.

>>76932831
>Cookie cutter sharks are trying to incite global nuclear war by tricking the Americans and Soviets into thinking the other attacked their submarines

>>76855096
>>76932875
what unbelievable assholes

>>76931746
>>76932092
>>76932541
The calcinite from X-Com: Terror from the Deep is exactly that. It's an old-timey diving suit filled with an alien ooze monster. It's kind of a joke to fight because it's melee only so you can just carpet bomb it with grenades and explosive cannon rounds.

>>76901237
>I'll gladly answer other random questions regarding Horrible Deep Sea Mermaid canon. In fact, I've for a long time wanted to do one of those things where people could submit questions and the artist draws the characters answering them.

Do the mermaids have names?

Do non-horrible non-deep sea mermaids also exist?

And the most important question: which mermaid can swallow the largest thing, and how big is it?

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Hey OP
Your concept is so good the Japs stole it. This manga is about a guy who hates fish being abducted and forced to pick a mermaid gf but they're all deep sea fish.
Main girl is an angler fish. Surprised no one has posted it yet. It's pretty generic but fun harem hijinks.

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>>76935384
Main grill. They're looking at the bioluminescence above them.

>>76935384
reminds me of that doujin where the guy rapes a mermaid

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>>76932875
>>76932914
I always knew those litte buggers were up to something!

>>76933535
>Do the mermaids have names?
They've never been referred with anything other than their genus/species name. However, I've sometimes had to shorten Black Swallower to "B. Swallower" due to space or character limit reasons, and I've decided that actually is how she'd sign her name. B is short for Betty. The other mermaids should probably similarly have names that start with the same initial as their species.

>Do non-horrible non-deep sea mermaids also exist?
I've drawn some, but only in the non "main continuity" pictures. Haven't decided whether they exist in the "canonical setting" as well. Whether they do or not would actually have some big implications on how the world the deep sea mermaids inhabit works.

>And the most important question: which mermaid can swallow the largest thing
I'm pretty sure the largest tummy I've drawn belongs to Gulper Eel. However, I feel the answer should be Black Swallower, both because the actual fish can probably swallow larger prey relative to its size and because it's her main character trait.

>how big is it?
Like many questions regarding deep sea fish, the answer remains for now unknown.

>>76935384
>>76935436
Haven't heard of this before. I know of Anko-san, which was mentioned earlier, as well as another manga with a deep sea fish girl (I think it was literally called "Deep Sea Girl"). Seems deep sea waifus are more popular than one might have thought.

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>>76933274
Speaking of Terror from the Deep, has anyone here played Stirring Abyss? It's an XCOM-like about the crew of a submarine that gets stranded at the bottom of the sea, which seems right up this thread's alley.

Haven't tried it yet myself, but it was definitely one of those games where I wishlisted it immidiately after reading the premise.

>>76935968
>Whether they do or not would actually have some big implications on how the world the deep sea mermaids inhabit works.
Why would that be?

>>76938371
If only kind of mermaids are the deep sea ones, then they exist so far removed from humans than most people wouldn't even know they exist and the world they inhabit can otherwise be like the real world. But regular mermaids would live closer to surface, in places where people would be far more likely to see an interact with them so their existence would be a well-known fact. That lends itself more to an "urban fantasy" setting where fantasy races exist alongside humans.

Tbh it's not like there really is a continuity to the deep sea mermaid comics (when I said "main continuity" I meant the comics where the mermaids exist in the "real world" instead of as characters in a story a narrator is reading or as PCs in an RPG), so it could very well be either case depending on what makes more sense, or is funnier, for a particular comic.

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I have very little to add to this thread outside of a thank you to the OP, lots of good info. I may use a monster anglerfish at some point that uses a mermaid lure.

Might be a bit late in the thread to pose this question, plus it's not precisely about deep sea ecology but here goes:
I'm trying to build a one shot where players are at the bottom of the ocean, like The Abyss. I'd like it to be reasonably realistic, so I have a few questions about the logistics of a deep ocean base.
Obviously the occupants will be pressurized to a certain extent to alleviate the stress on the hull, would that be enough to have a moonpool like The Abyss shows, or is the outside pressure too high to manage something that convenient? I'm thinking of setting the game a mile deep in an unnamed portion of the ocean. If I can't do a moonpool that's fine, I just like the concept.
At a mile deep, if a person is acclimated, what equipment do they need to be outside the base/submarine? A full hard suit, or could they get away with just regular diving gear? I've heard that you need special breathing gear at a certain depth as well. If we don't have such equipment now, what would we need to achieve to build such a thing? I don't intend on cheating with magic liquid oxygen. I just want to know if I have to plan for the players being in big bulky diving suits or not.
Roughly how long would you need to be depressurized if you needed to surface from such a depth? Is it days or weeks? I know you could theoretically just surface very slowly, does this make the process faster?

Thanks for any information anons might have.

>>76909653
>The horrible sea rape louse returns!

>>76943165
Michael Crichton's "The Sphere" has that as a major plot element. The book goes into it in detail, while the movie handwaves most of it. The science in general is rooted in the mid-90s and the last half of the book is meant to be occurring in a fairly major mindfuck, just so you're prepared.

>>76943165
I'm not an expert on this, but the thing is that water is very heavy. At one mile down, ever square meter will have the weight of 1600 tons pressing down on it. We've built craft that can handle that (in fact we've built ones that can go all the way to the deepest parts of the ocean at about 7 miles), but it requires a shape that's good at distributing pressure and some very thick metal walls (William Beebe's original design for what would become the bathysphere was an upright cylinder, but Otis Barton pointed out that it would be crushed flat by the water pressure). A moonpool probably wouldn't work as the pressure would just force water in. The internal pressure needed to avoid that would probably not be conductive for human habitation.
For surviving outside of a submarine you're either going to need a "diving suit" that is essentially a mini-sub (basically a sphere with mechanical arms) or some kind of super high tech power armor that can handle the weight of a building pressing down on your heard. Human biology unfortunately isn't conductive to the strategy deep sea animals use to deal with the issue, which is to avoid pressure differences entirely (if they can breathe in water they don't need to maintain any air-filled areas inside their bodies, meaning the pressure difference between inside and outside of their bodies is effectively zero). Though sperm whales and other deep-diving mammals can actually handle that kinds of pressures as well, but IIRC they need to vacate their lungs of air and rely on dissolved oxygen in their blood to survive. Essentially, animals adapted to deep sea life have ways to let the stress field pass through them like they were just part of the medium, but humans can't do that so we have to brute force it by just making a durable enough hull that it can maintain an air-filled space white the surrounding pressure is trying to crush it.

This shit fucks me up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwuVpNYrKPY

>>76943165
>>76947649
So a bit of research has shown that the deepest dive ever done, in a hard suit is at 2000 feet, 610 meters. Well short of the 1 mile goal. This was a specially designed suit with articulated limbs made of hardened aluminum, and mostly moved around by small thrusters.
If you're not too picky you could probably say "well it's like 20 more years in the future and they made an even better hardsuit." Based on what I read that wasn't pushing the tech to the absolute limit, since it's US Navy submarine rescue team stuff and that was the initial test. But you're also talking increasing your depth by about 3 times. So I don't really know if this is even possible based on material science. Does anyone know how Crichton solved it? >>76945698 . You could go with a straight up power armor style suit which might be fun, but probably not conducive to a horror game like I think you want. On the other hand, playing up the cramped suit totally dependent on a thin umbilical, designed more for research and maybe undersea welding than for easy maneuverability, barely able to see through the fogged up glass, peering through marine snow at something moving just outside your foglights, could work. Plus there's a bit less legwork involved since the suits are at 1 atmo. No decompression.

>>76935968
What an asshole. Is cookie cutter shark the most evil mermaid?

>>76949064
Yes, as the rest are mostly neutral. I should probably use her as a villain more.

>>76935384
>>76935436
The art on that looks rather good, though

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This thread is really cool, but the only cute deep sea creatures are the crabs and the isopods.
>>76870082
>but in 2000 an individual about 6 m long was caught, showing that they can get far larger than anybody had anticipated.
Is there a limit to how big these things can grow? And not just for the goblin shark, but also for the frilled shark - I know these guys can live for pretty much forever, so I wonder how far they can go.

>>76950491
Probably the availability of food, mostly. Water animals aren't as limited by the square-cube law as they're neutrally buoyant while in water, which is why whales can get so huge, but being big still needs more energy.
It's actually a mystery why many deep sea invertebrates get huge compared to their shallower water versions (the giant squid being the most extreme example), thought it probably has to do with their metabolism being so slow that the loss of energy needed to sustain a larger body is made up for the ability to make use of a larger variety of food sources and store more energy for when they need to go for a long period without eating.

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>>76950533
>it probably has to do with their metabolism being so slow that the loss of energy needed to sustain a larger body is made up for the ability to make use of a larger variety of food sources and store more energy for when they need to go for a long period without eating.
Thanks for the explanation, I know jack all about aquatic animal so I had just assume they were another case of Bergmann's rule in action since it gets colder the deeper you go. Still, if it's to store energy then I wonder why the Japanese Spider crab only grows longer limbs and not the central body.

>>76950639
I was thinking about Bergmann's rule as well, but that only really applies for warm-blooded animals, as they need to spend energy to maintain body heat (larger size means less surface area relative to volume, which means less heat loss). Invertebrates are cold-blooded so they don't need to spend energy to warm themselves up, and the deep sea is a steady 4 degrees C so their body temperature should never change anyway.
Another odd thing is that deep sea gigantism seems exclusive to invertebrates. The fish are generally smaller than in surface waters.

Deep sea gigantism isn't well understood. Some have proposed that they grow huge because there's more oxygen at greater pressures.

>>76950736
...like ancient bugs?

>>76950768
kinda, yeah.

>>76950801
I had no idea non-insect also have spiracles.

>>76950824
Crustaceans have gills, but they still function more effectively in a higher-oxygen environment. I don't actually know how cephalopods breathe.

>>76950824
Underwater invertebrates generally have gills, but some of the really weird shit down there doesn't have breathing organs at all and relies on diffusion.
>>76950840
>cephalopods
Gills!

>>76871640
>that sage
kek

>>76885228
>Uwuuuu, my cookies never come out right.

>>76948126
>On the other hand, playing up the cramped suit totally dependent on a thin umbilical, designed more for research and maybe undersea welding than for easy maneuverability, barely able to see through the fogged up glass, peering through marine snow at something moving just outside your foglights, could work.
This is viscerally uncomfortable to me. Though presumably the suits would be designed specifically to avoid fogging up the glass, since this would be the precise set of conditions they were made for.

>>76951823
She's a blobfish. Granted, blobfish only get the iconic melted look when brought to surface. Under water they actually look like perfectly normal fish.

>>76866841
Knightly Diving Suit.JPG

>>76952372
That`s the reason why she is the seer, she saw the surface and survived it.

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>>76952372
Indeed. Live blobfish look like this. It doesn't really deserve its title as the ugliest animal. A little boring-looking perhaps, but there's a lot uglier fish out there. You wouldn't look so good if placed in an environment where your body would not be able to support its own weight, either.

>>76953909
>pic
It's actually kind of cute.

>>76953909
Looks like it has an old man's skin.

>>76953909
I don't think blob mode blobfish is ugly, it's kinda cute in a weird mascot way.

>>76953909
>not actually a blobby fish
>still named the blobfish
so cruel....

>>76852063
I thought this was going to be an iceberg thread about wargames and RPGs, could someone more knowledgeable than me give me some suggestions?

>>76947918
I always wonder what might be lurking in the depths of undersea brine lakes.

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>>76964493
You could probably get some mileage out making it the "home terrain" of some kind of corrupting, supernatural force. You know, like an underwater equivalent of blight or creep from Warcraft 3/StarCraft.