An Invisible Sea Creature

Have a look at this amazing creature -- the Sea Sapphire.  Males can make themselves amazingly invisible.

Photo by scientist, wildlife photographer and filmmaker Stefan Siebert.

Learn how the Sea Sapphire does this amazing trick in this article in Deep Sea News:
"...a sea sapphire’s color has more in common with an oil sheen than a pigmented jewel. Combine this nifty trick with the sea sapphire’s impressively transparent body, and you have an animal as radiant as a star in one moment, and invisible in the next."

Plankton - could we live without them...??

Ran across an excellent website by Dr. Richard Kirby www.PlanktonPundit.org. Dr. Kirby is a plankton scientist and science communicator based in the UK.  It's easy to overlook these tiny plants and creatures, but we are beginning to realize that plankton are fundamental to life on earth as we know it.

I can highly recommend Dr. Kirby's website; he does a great job of explaining and illustrating how plankton influence the marine food web from fish to whales, and from penguins to polar bears.  He also shows how plankton are responsible for the oxygen in every second breath we take!!

The Ocean Drifters video is excellent. "Ocean Drifters, a secret world beneath the waves" is a short film about plankton written, produced and directed by Dr Richard Kirby (Marine Institute Research Fellow, Plymouth University) with a narration by Sir David Attenborough and music by Richard Grassby-Lewis.

Drawing upon Richard Kirby's plankton imagery, Ocean Drifters reveals how the plankton have shaped life on Earth and continue to influence our lives in ways that most of us never imagine.
Further information about the plankton can also be found at the Ocean Drifters website (oceandrifters.org) and in the popular book about plankton also titled "Ocean Drifters, a secret world beneath the waves".