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have a mid-atlantic ridge for your dash :)

The Black Smoker Beast can be found roaming the spreading ridges in the depths of the oceans. Hydrothermal vents support a lot of life, so I wanted this creature to look a bit more friendly than my other geology monsters! The enormous, chimney-like structures are absolutely awe-inspiring and I hope I did them justice. I really wanted the beast to have such a chimney for a shell, and gave it the iron armour and red skin of the volcano snail, and white/red whiskers based on the tube worms that make their home at black smokers. Lots of fun again painting with acrylic inks.

had to design a classical CD cover for art class. i turned it into an opportunity to expeirment with making art using the lasso selection tool, i like the lava a lot!

Hydrothermal Vents

Charnia

In the distant past of our planet, deep beneath the waves of the ocean, a strange creature has made a living in the pitch black of the deep sea.

Harvesting the energy of a hydrothermal vent, a colony of Charnia glows ghostly in the floodlight of the submarine. What exactly are they? Animal, plant, something entirely different? Finally, this question will be answered…

Chrysomallon squamiferum, the Scaly-foot Gastropod (more commonly known as the Volcano Snail) is a species of deep sea snail that have only been found to live in three hydrothermal vent fields, being the Kairei, Solitaire, and Longqi vent fields, all of which are found off the coast of Madagascar. The vent fields they live in can be as hot as 400 degrees celsius (the water does not boil due to the intense pressure)

They're named for the dermal plating along their foot, which is an adaption made to protect against predatory snails, what makes them really unique however is their distinctive ability to incorporate minerals into their shell giving an additional layer of protection. Specimens from the Kairei vent field (shown above) have an iron shell and are even magnetic, due to the higher concentration of greigite (iron sulfide compound), whereas members from the Longqi vent field have goldish shells due to the presence of pyrite and greigite.

They have a mutualistic relationship with a yet unnamed chemosynthetic bacteria that provides energy to the snail. They mainly serve as prey to predatory snail species.

They are unfortunately an endangered species, threatened by deep sea mining, and there are no current plans for conservation.

Doodledex - #705-A Hisuian Sliggoo

While there's no outward change to the Goomy that lived in Hisui, the same can't be said for their evolution! Thanks to exposure to high concentrations of iron in the water there, Hisuian Sliggoo are Steel/Dragon types and have developed a large, round, metallic shell! (And yeah, this technically makes them snails instead of slugs.)

However, unlike normal snails that only keep their organs in their shell, Hisuian Sliggoo holes its entire body up in there, with only its head and arms sticking out! It seems like this would make it awkward to move around... but when it needs to go fast it will retract all the way into its shell, stand itself up on its side and roll away!

bitches will see the incredible ways in which life finds a way and adapts to even the most hostile environments and go "ew thats ugly"

(Please no vanilla extract or micro plastics this time—pollution is no laughing matter)

100 Days of Sea Creatures Day 58 - Giant Tube Worm (Riftia pachyptila)

These are deep-sea hydrothermal vent crabs from the Pacific. These preserved specimens were collected by our buddy Nic on a deep-sea expedition.

He aptly named them “Hoff crabs” because they have hairy chests that they use to farm chemosynthetic bacteria which they then eat. The bacteria use the chemicals in the hydrothermal vent to grow.

They were preserved in 95% ethanol at -20C for optimal DNA preservation

do you have any cool ocean words that could work as a name? deep sea related especially

funny enough I'm blanking really hard on that x) I think you'd be better off looking at deep sea organisms' scientific species name and coming up wth a derivative name, or seeing if other languages have names that relate to the sea/the abyss (abyss ones are not common i gotta say, ive looked)

I made an inflatable sculpture of a hydrothermal vent, complete with tube worms and a starfish!

Tube worms

(found in hydrothermal vent environments)

Hydrothermal vent teeming with life.

Source: amnh.org