A lot of deep sea creatures have very slow metabolisms. It is one of the many reasons sea dredging and mining should be held with such disdain: these are ecosystems which may take thousands of years to recover.
We don't even appreciate how long it takes a forest to recover, much less one with glass sponges that are thousands of years old.
by jackconsidine
1 subcomments
When H Melville stuffed the middle of Moby Dick with a "cetology" -- BEFORE The Origin of Species, famously saying "a whale is a fish" -- he didn't forget the Greenland Shark. I think all the time about how many of those sharks swimming around in 1851 are still swimming around today.
by joshuaheard
5 subcomments
Jeremy Wade, host of the TV show "River Monsters", has an episode where he investigates the Loch Ness Monster and concludes it's likely a Greenland Shark that swam up an underground river from the North Atlantic to the lake. He likens the shark's horse-like face and the distribution of the low fins on the shark's back to descriptions of the monster. A solitary long-living fish could explain the occasional sightings, and the scientists' findings that there is not enough food in the lake for a breeding population of large carnivores.
by internet_points
1 subcomments
Oh, the article is by Katherine Rundell. She has written some very nice children's books.
There's a business lesson in the longest lived creatures being the ones that move slow, abide small insults, and make themselves generally unappetizing.
by keiferski
4 subcomments
I think the title is a reference to David Foster Wallace's awesome article, Consider the Lobster.
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