Evening star., 1943-04-25
Strange Creatures
Of the Sea
Bu Frederic J. Haskt7i.

| but at the bottom OF the oceans are mil
lions of living creatures many OF which
remain unknown, unnamed and un-
classified.
For instance, a recently published
study of undersea life reveals that the
floors of all oceans literally are alive
with so many species of life that few
people can even begin to comprehend
what the great waves cover. Some OF
these creatures are fish, many species
of which have never been caught, while
other living things run the gamut from
tiny, moving water insects to giant mon
sters with great bulging eyes and pow
erful bodies. Only the camera can de-
scribe them.
Since it is believed and contended by
most scientists that all life originally
came from the sea- any attempt at en-
tering it or even studying its inhabitants
is like homecoming and greeting of
neighbors of old. Man bears within his
body many proofs of aquatic ancestry,
and when it is realized that three-fifths
of the earths surface is covered with
water, to an average depth of 2 miles, it
can be seen that an entire lifetime would
be required to gain no more than cur
sorry knowledge of submarine life. 1t is
the great uneXplored field.
Whether one wades out from shore
| and, in imagination, walks down and
down into mid depths and the abysmal
depths, or dives overheard and, equally
in imagination, descends mile after mile,
he finds three dominant changes in life
conditions: The water becomes steadily
colder, until it stops just short of freez-
ing, the light of the sun fades rapidly
and is replaced with almost absolute
darkness; and the pressure is that of the
weight of water. AS a square inch of
water one mile in height weighs about a
ton, this is the pressure al the depth, not
only from above, but from sides and
below.
Scientists say there is no reason to
conclude that life originated beyond the
vitalizing rays Of sunshine, and that all
deep-see organisms have gradually trav-
eled down the slopes of continents and
islands, or have sunk, in the course of
ages, from the surface to the black mid
| depths.
Zones are apparent in the sea and,
though they are rather vague and merge
more Or less insensibly into each other,
yet they serve to mark off the general
haunts of many living creatures. At the
surface there is an ultramarine and
white area. of whose inhabitants flying
ErI,
evidently a protective combination of
colors, matching the shade of the ocean
as seen from above and the sky or water
ceiling from below.
Close upon the floor of this zone is an
indefinite transparent stratus, where a
traWilng net may capture many glasslike
larval eels, and fish whose last meal is
the only shadow-casting part of them.
Here, too, are found shrimps which from
end to end are like spun glass, and in
distinguishable in a jar of water until
their waving legs disturb the surface.
Then come silvery fish like tinsel in sun
light, though in their own haunts their
eyes may never have reflected a scin-
tilla of light.
Finally there is the lower zone of dark
ness in which live creatures of great in
terest because of their enormous age,
the changelessness Of their haunts and
the great difficulty of obtaining them.
Their appearance is often in a bizarre
and strange place as evidenced by pic
lures made undersea. The dramatic
and artistic angles become as fascinating
as the technical point of view.
The basis of it all is adaptation to the
unusual and somewhat mysterious con-
ditions of life. Near the top of the sur
face, fish are more or less typical of
ordinary forms, but lower down are the
ghostly ribbons of water in which are
numberless young eels and great jelly
fish, pounds upon pounds of living
muscle, stomach and tentacles which at
death form merely film of tissue
One of the commonest forms a few
score fathoms down is the silver hatchet-
fish, and with this fish is encountered
the first of multitude of apparent con-
tradictions. For instance, why should
this silvery, amazingly shaped creature
have great eyes which eternally look
upward while all of it's light organs are
| directed downward? But this is only
one question to which scientists have not
found a satisfactory answer.
The mention of light organs introduces
perhaps the most astonishing adapta-
ton of deep-sea fish. When normally
shaped fish began, thousands of years
ago, to drift deeper and deeper into the
ocean, it must have done one of two
things to meet the changing conditions.
AS darkness increased, and light became
a thing of the past, it had to initiate the
nocturnal creatures of the land and be-
come dark-adapted. In some cases its
eyes increased in size, like those of owls,
and its colors gradually faded, and it
became, also like many owls, reddish or
| dark.
However, there was another way Of
adaptation-the way of many cave ami
mails which never see the light of day.
They close their eyes altogether and
since these deep-sea fish never acquired
lights, they developed elongated fms
split up into myriad of long tentacles
which enable them to feel and blindly
to sense their way to food in the dark.
On the other hand, creatures have been
discovered that have developed their
own lighting system.
| Scientists who have cope into tbI.