Friday 15 February 2019

Sea serpent sighting not what it seems and re emergence of prehistoric predator.


'It looked like a big condom': Diver is stunned as bizarre-looking 30-foot 'sea serpent' appears in front of him off of New Zealand
Ben Laurie came across the creature while diving at Cape Brett in New Zealand.He said he had never seen a 30-foot sea creature like it in his years as a diver .In a video of the dive the creature floats underwater surrounded by smaller fish.Ben Laurie, 21, encountered the 30-foot creature while diving near Cape Brett on New Zealand's North Island. 
Despite his years of diving experience he said he had no idea what it was and had never seen one before. In a video of the dive, the creature - which he compared to a condom - floats underwater surrounded by much smaller marine life.
In fact it is believed to be a pyrosome, a floating colony made up of thousands of sea squirts which feeds by filtering microscopic plant cells out of the sea.   Each squirt draws in water from outside the pyrosome and then releases the filtered water inside the colony. 'Apparently they only come from depths of 2,000 metres, so it's quite rare for them to be up in the shallows like that,' said the diver, from Kerikeri.

Disappearing great whites see elusive ‘living fossil’ shark species re-emerge in South African waters
‘In 18-plus years of working at Seal Island, we had never seen sevengill sharks in our surveys,’ says naturalist Chris Fallows.The disappearance of great white sharks from a major hunting ground off the coast of South Africa has allowed a species of “living fossil” predators to re-emerge and take over the top of the food chain, scientists have said.A two-decade shark monitoring project around Seal Island in False Bay, South Africa – where great whites are renowned for flying out of the water to catch fur seals – has recorded a mysterious collapse in great white shark sightings since 2015.But the vacuum has resulted in a rise in sightings of ancient sevengill sharks, which are unique among sharks for retaining the seven gill slits seen on their prehistoric ancestors – rather than the five slits in modern species.
“In 18-plus years of working at Seal Island, we had never seen sevengill sharks in our surveys,” said Chris Fallows, co-author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday.“Following the disappearance of white sharks in 2017, sevengill began to show up for the first time and have been increasing in number ever since.”
Read rest here :

As some species fade back could more ancient species re-emerge ? We may yet hear of more ancient sea creatures appearing.


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