New creatures spotted in the deep
Thousands of animals have been found living happily in the murky depths of the oceans.
A new survey of marine life has uncovered jellyfish, shrimps, starfish, crabs and much more, all flourishing 5km below sea level.
Some 17,650 species call this cold, permanently dark habitat their home.
The Census of Marine Life has shown the oceans to be much livelier than first thought.
Sunlight only penetrates 200m into the sea, while the pressures down below are simply crushing.
Researchers used deep-towed cameras and sonar to spot the critters, which included creatures known as 'Dumbos' - luminous jellyfish around two metres long.
All these animals live on bacteria that break down methane or oil, or food falling from the surface such as whale carcasses.
But the region far below does have the odd visitor from above - one southern elephant seal was registered at a depth of 2,388 metres.
For more pictures of the weird and wonderful creature found in the deep, click here.
Weird Science Factoid: A person swallows around 295 times while eating dinner. Gulp!
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
