Deep Sea Invertebrates

 

Vampire Squid, linocut, 9.25" x 12.5", by Ele Willoughby, 2024 

For the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt bathyal I made a linocut vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis). The 'vampire squid from hell' is a small deep sea cephalopod  found throughout temperate and tropical oceans with two long retractile filaments, located between the first two pairs of arms on its dorsal side, unlike either octopuses or squids. Though most closely related to octopods it is the only surviving memeber of its own order Vampyromorphida. It survives in the deep sea thanks to bioluminescent organs and its unique slow oxygen metabolism.

It is up to 30 cm long and has a webbing of skin connecting its eight arms, each lined with rows of fleshy spines or cirri. It can be a range of colours but lacks the sort of colour-changing ability of some cephalopods; it is however, covered in photophores which allow it to produce disorienting flashes of light in its ligtless (aphotic) environment, 600 m to 3300 m below the surface. It can also eject a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light from its arm tips if agitated, coating predators in glowing ink. Its eyes are disproportionately large. Its ear-like fins protruding from the mantle are the adults main means of propulsion. Despite its name it feeds on detritus, not blood.

Dumbo Octopus, linocut 9.25” by 12.5” by Ele Willoughby, 2024

For the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt abyssal I made this lino block print of a charming Grimpoteuthis octopus, one of a genus of pelagic cirrate (finned) octopods known as the dumbo octopuses. The fins reminded scientists of ears on the elephant in Disney’s 1941 film Dumbo. Hence their common name dumbo octopuses. 

It's believed dumbo octopuses have a worldwide distribution, living in the cold, abyssal depths ranging from 1000–7000meters and they have even been observed at hadal depths.

Headless Chicken Monster, 8" x 8" linocut print by Ele Willoughby, 2024

For the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt hadal, I made this lino block print of the headless chicken monster! A strange-looking sea cucumber called Enypniastes eximia, the swimming sea cucumber or the pink see-through fantasia. It is printed by hand on delicate 8" x 8" Japanese mulberry paper. Their swimming fin allows them to move up 1 km in the water column to avoid predators or find new feeding ground. The semi-transparent 11 to 25 cm long, benthic, bulbous creatures with bifurcated tentacles, large anterior sail and visible intestines go from light pink to reddish-brown as they age. They can also be bioluminescent. They feed on benthic sediments during brief forays onto the seafloor. These animals can be found at extreme depths including an observation at 5,775 m in the Marianas Trench.