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A Tiny Fish Tells A Big Story: Some fish only spend a part of the year in the Gulf of Mexico, but some, like the Gulf killifish, live there year-round. In addition, these estuary fish are small and abundant, making them an excellent study species for scien

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Killifish in the Gulf of Mexico

January 2015

In this photo, the jellyfish Pandea rubra may have been surprised by a camera light or in a defensive state, causing it to contract its red mantle and reveal its complex muscle anatomy.

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Red Paper Lantern Jellyfish

March 2016

Like a typical jelly, the tentacles of Haliscera biglowi trail behind it as it moves, causing water flow to push small organisms into the path of the jelly’s deadly stinging grip.

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Stinging Grip

March 2016

Bathochordaeus stygius are filter feeders closely related to sea squirts in the phylum Chordata, the same phylum to which humans belong.

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Mucus Home

March 2016

Sea squire illustrations from Ernst Haeckel.

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Sea Squirts

June 2015

This 1936 blue whale specimen from the Gulf of Alaska (above: preserved in alcohol, below: CT scan) is part of a rare Smithsonian collection of whale fetuses that were collected in association with commercial whaling operations in the early to mid-20th cen

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Blue Whale Specimen

March 2015

Gulf Marsh Animals Bounce Back But Monitoring Continues: One of the biggest questions is how Gulf animals will fare in the years after the spill, since oil spill impacts don't often happen immediately. One group of GoMRI researchers studied salt marsh anim

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Fiddler Crabs In a Gulf Marsh

January 2015

Illustration of colorful nudibranchs from Ernst Haeckel.

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Nudibranchs

June 2015

Tomopteris's bristles produce yellow bioluminescence, a unusual color among midwater animals, nearly all of which make some sort of light.

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Glow Worms

May 2016

Haeckel discovered a species of rhizostome jellyfish in Bellagemma, Ceylon, in December 1881. Its form so impressed him that he used it as a model for ceiling decorations in his Villa Medusa home in Jena.

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Rhizostome Jellyfish

June 2015

Sand dollars (like those pictured in this set of illustrations) are flattened, burrowing sea urchins. Dead, sunlight-bleached specimens resemble silver coins, hence their common name. These figures portray a sand dollar’s lifecycle from larva to adult.

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Sea Urchins

June 2015

Jellyfish illustrations from Ernst Haeckel.

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Semaeostome Jellyfish

June 2015