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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

Cystisoma (a type of hyperiid crustacean) has one huge pair of eyes.

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Giant Eyes

March 2016

Corolla moves through the water by flapping a wing plate nearly twice the size of its gelatinous shell, giving it the nickname “sea butterfly”.

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Sea Butterfly

March 2016

Sea squire illustrations from Ernst Haeckel.

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Sea Squirts

June 2015

Starfish—marine invertebrates of the phylum Echinodermata—are famous for their ability to shed limbs as a means of defense and then regenerate the sacrificed part.

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Haeckel Starfish

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

Citizen Science Tracks Oil’s Path: When oil spills into seawater, it's hard to know where ocean currents will carry it. To map Gulf currents and improve predictions, scientists with GoMRI's GISR project are dropping biodegradable yellow driftcards throug

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Citizen Science With a Drift Card

January 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

Follow the Fingerprint: There are many sources of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, including natural deep-sea oil seeps, small spills from ships, and oil from roads that washes into the sea—not to mention big oil spills like Deepwater Horizon. How do GoMRI res

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Layers of Weathered Oil

January 2015

Monk seal pup

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A Mediterranean Monk Seal Pup

April 2016

Illustration of colorful nudibranchs from Ernst Haeckel.

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Nudibranchs

June 2015

A puffin sits on a rock next to a puffin decoy.

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Puffin and Decoy

January 2018