Marine Hatchetfish

Image: cracked.com

These ghostly creatures are Marine Hatchetfish. There are about 40 species ranging between 3 and 12 centimetres in length and they obviously get their name from their hatchet shape when seen in profile. You probably won't have these guys in your aquarium at home, although you might have the unrelated Freshwater Hatchetfish instead. The Marine variety can be found in all the major oceans in the warmth of tropical and subtropical waters. Kind of warm, anyway; the deep sea isn't all that conducive to the balmy or the clement. They don't seem to like it much do they? In fact, they appear decidedly agonised. It's not so bad though, it's all to do with how they make their living.

Lubber Grasshopper

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Lubber Grasshoppers look absolutely fantastic! They can reach some 8 centimetres in length, which is eye-catching in itself, but look at those tremendous colours! Oranges, browns, yellows, reds, all sorts of black bands and borders. Clearly this insect is no shrinking violet. That usually means one of two things...

Comb Jelly

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Comb Jellies are another of those peculiar presences that one can scarcely imagine being a real, proper animal, let alone a very hungry predator of the high seas. They look somewhat akin to jellyfish, but that's probably because near enough anything composed mostly of jelly can't help but look at least a bit like whatever the most famous jelly thing happens to be. Comb Jellies actually have an entire phylum all to themselves - Ctenophora, and under this banner they have conquered the world's oceans from pole to pole and surface to floor. There are only about 150 or so species and while they are nowhere near as diverse as Cnidaria in general, they are certainly more varied than jellyfish. So what ties all the Comb Jellies together?

Pacific White Skate

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This is a fabulously ghostly looking fish, I could almost imagine it sneaking up and saying "BOO!" I wouldn't hear it, though. The Pacific White Skate is amongst the deepest living of all skates, taking up residence on southeast Pacific continental slopes at depths of about 800 to 3,000 metres. If I ever go down there in a dark, claustrophobic submersible, I really hope they don't sneak up and say "BOO!" because it would be even more terrifying than usual.

Blue Button

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Here we see yet another weird, colonial Cnidarian to go along with the Portuguese Man o' War, but this one is much more closely related to the By-the-Wind Sailor. It's actually very similar to the Sailor, the main difference being that it lacks the little sail. It still has the float though, and it's still hard, full of gas and essential in keeping the Blue Button up at the water's surface as it drifts around the warmer parts of the world's oceans. It's also about 1 inch across.

Krait

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Kraits are horrifically venomous snakes that are found in India, Sri Lanka, parts of Pakistan and much of southeast Asia. They are elapids, which means they are closely related to other venomous terrors including some of the ones that get called cobras or adders. At least they have nice, round pupils rather than those mean, old slits so many other snakes have.