HOME | DD

Description

Inhabitants of the open oceans from Settlers from the Deep. Aspidurus examinans is a minute crustacean derived from crabs that retain a larva-like form all their life, and form vast swarms just below the sea surface. Phagonauta exulans is a catfish descendant that wanders the ocean catching the wind in an oversized dorsal fin, trawling sticky barbels in the water to catch preys. Pogonocetus tiresias, another catfish descendant, is a huge, blind filterfeeder that locates bugfish swarms with an array of chemical and electric sensors.

___

XIII. Bountiful Sea (part 1)
Open ocean

The rolling waves that stretch for thousands of kilometers from the muddy lowlands of Fuegia to the forest-clad cliffs of western Afrasia may appear empty and lifeless, but they conceal the most extraordinary variety of creatures shoaling and swarming in the depths. Above, vast invisible layers of plankton feed grazers and browsers of all sizes; below, lumbering giants feast on the ceaseless rain of organic matter.
Empty and lifeless - except for a traslucid shape slowly moving across the waters. Roughly triangular, one or two meters tall, it resembles a sail held by bony spines: it's the dorsal fin of a wandering slimeship (Phagonauta exulans), a curious type of sparkfish that has renounced to most active movement to be carried by the wind in the areas where the banks of plankton are most dense. A thick pad of fat surrounding a big swimbladder keeps the body floating just below the surface. Of course, should the need ever arise, the slimeship can fold down the sail and swim away with the strokes of a powerful tail.
The oral tentacles of the slimeship fall down in the water for over 3 meters; coated in a thick mucous slime, they form a ghostly net that tangles algae, floating eggs and larvae, swimming crustaceans and smaller fish, which a pair of shorter, more mobile tentacles disentangles from the web and carries to the mouth. Often the tip of the tentacles breaks off or is picked by predators, but their regeneration is fast enough to keep them functional. Its sight is very weak, well compensated by the electrical and chemical senses.

In the cold arctic waters, or in the Ob Sea, plankton flocks at its densest, and slimeships reap their greatest harvest. Here, crabs have produced swarms of neotenic fish-like larvae, the aptly named bugfish (Aspidurus examinans). Never more than a cm long, these creatures hardly resemble either a fish or a crustacean, propelled by articulated fins covered in bristles, tasting the water before them with biramate antennae. Their mouth is little more than a filtering apparatus to sieve the organic matter floating in the seawater, be it disturbed sediment, algae, excrements, microscopic eggs or plankton (they technically don't qualify as plankton themselves, as they swim by their own power).
Aspidurus examinans is, of course, but one of many thousands of species of bugfish. Distinguishable by an immense variety in the shape and color of their carapace, their dorsal spikes and their bristly fins, adapting to subtly different lifestyles. Some, for example, have flanges that funnel the thinnest particulate in their mouthparts, while others have wide heads to glide over silty seafloors.
Perhaps among the more alien creatures of the Erebozoic, bugfish exploded into enormous numbers only a couple million years after the Beam: as neoteny shortened their life cycle to a fraction of a year, they filled oceans devoid of predators and abundant with dissolving organic matter. They appeared just below the foam in vast glittering swarms, tracing the path of the currents in cloudy green. The early, gliding raywings learned to skim the top of the swarms, and giant sharklike blennies to take bites from their sides. Their number is now vastly smaller: new species have appeared since then to feed on that abundance, and on the matter that sustained it, evolving into a host of giant filter-feeders.

The most impressive among them is doubtlessly the thunderwhale (Pogonocetus tiresias). This enormous sparkfish, frequently over 18 meters long, haunts the deep nordic waters, emerging every night to follow the bugfish swarms, swallowing them by millions with the cavelike mouth that opens in its broad, flat head. Six thin barbels leave its lips to stretch out for another dozen meters into the cold water, tasting it with their chemical sensors. The lips themselves are covered in folds and papillae that hold an array of electric organs that inform the thunderwhale about the activity of both preys and predators. So refined are these senses, compared with the weak sight of its ancestors, that adult thunderwhales are completely blind.
Water rushing in the cavelike mouth is pushed out by a massive tongue covered by a keratinous sheath; this sheath rises in comb-like structures that retain food particles ready to be swallowed. The vast fish expels its feces in large pellets; with these (as well as with the corpses that sink as soon as decomposition ruptures their gasbladders), thunderwhales play a crucial role in transferring organic matter, particularly phosphate, to the seafloor, where they feed dark forests of brown algae, and worm-ridden bacterial mats that recall those that ruled the land millions of years before.
When not feeding, thunderwhales retire for days in the cold, dim layers of the sea, calling each other with electric signals. They mate safe from the dangers of the upper waters, releasing vast clouds of eggs that are quickly fertilized and rise to the surface, floating with the plankton until they hatch. Raywings and fish devour most of their number, but enough survive to create a new generation. They exist for many years as larvae in the upper waters, slowly sinking as their adult tissues develop; safe from the hectic pace of mammalian metabolism that cuts short the life of whales, they can last well over 300 years.

Description

Inhabitants of the open oceans from Settlers from the Deep. Aspidurus examinans is a minute crustacean derived from crabs that retain a larva-like form all their life, and form vast swarms just below the sea surface. Phagonauta exulans is a catfish descendant that wanders the ocean catching the wind in an oversized dorsal fin, trawling sticky barbels in the water to catch preys. Pogonocetus tiresias, another catfish descendant, is a huge, blind filterfeeder that locates bugfish swarms with an array of chemical and electric sensors.

___

XIII. Bountiful Sea (part 1)
Open ocean

The rolling waves that stretch for thousands of kilometers from the muddy lowlands of Fuegia to the forest-clad cliffs of western Afrasia may appear empty and lifeless, but they conceal the most extraordinary variety of creatures shoaling and swarming in the depths. Above, vast invisible layers of plankton feed grazers and browsers of all sizes; below, lumbering giants feast on the ceaseless rain of organic matter.
Empty and lifeless - except for a traslucid shape slowly moving across the waters. Roughly triangular, one or two meters tall, it resembles a sail held by bony spines: it's the dorsal fin of a wandering slimeship (Phagonauta exulans), a curious type of sparkfish that has renounced to most active movement to be carried by the wind in the areas where the banks of plankton are most dense. A thick pad of fat surrounding a big swimbladder keeps the body floating just below the surface. Of course, should the need ever arise, the slimeship can fold down the sail and swim away with the strokes of a powerful tail.
The oral tentacles of the slimeship fall down in the water for over 3 meters; coated in a thick mucous slime, they form a ghostly net that tangles algae, floating eggs and larvae, swimming crustaceans and smaller fish, which a pair of shorter, more mobile tentacles disentangles from the web and carries to the mouth. Often the tip of the tentacles breaks off or is picked by predators, but their regeneration is fast enough to keep them functional. Its sight is very weak, well compensated by the electrical and chemical senses.

In the cold arctic waters, or in the Ob Sea, plankton flocks at its densest, and slimeships reap their greatest harvest. Here, crabs have produced swarms of neotenic fish-like larvae, the aptly named bugfish (Aspidurus examinans). Never more than a cm long, these creatures hardly resemble either a fish or a crustacean, propelled by articulated fins covered in bristles, tasting the water before them with biramate antennae. Their mouth is little more than a filtering apparatus to sieve the organic matter floating in the seawater, be it disturbed sediment, algae, excrements, microscopic eggs or plankton (they technically don't qualify as plankton themselves, as they swim by their own power).
Aspidurus examinans is, of course, but one of many thousands of species of bugfish. Distinguishable by an immense variety in the shape and color of their carapace, their dorsal spikes and their bristly fins, adapting to subtly different lifestyles. Some, for example, have flanges that funnel the thinnest particulate in their mouthparts, while others have wide heads to glide over silty seafloors.
Perhaps among the more alien creatures of the Erebozoic, bugfish exploded into enormous numbers only a couple million years after the Beam: as neoteny shortened their life cycle to a fraction of a year, they filled oceans devoid of predators and abundant with dissolving organic matter. They appeared just below the foam in vast glittering swarms, tracing the path of the currents in cloudy green. The early, gliding raywings learned to skim the top of the swarms, and giant sharklike blennies to take bites from their sides. Their number is now vastly smaller: new species have appeared since then to feed on that abundance, and on the matter that sustained it, evolving into a host of giant filter-feeders.

The most impressive among them is doubtlessly the thunderwhale (Pogonocetus tiresias). This enormous sparkfish, frequently over 18 meters long, haunts the deep nordic waters, emerging every night to follow the bugfish swarms, swallowing them by millions with the cavelike mouth that opens in its broad, flat head. Six thin barbels leave its lips to stretch out for another dozen meters into the cold water, tasting it with their chemical sensors. The lips themselves are covered in folds and papillae that hold an array of electric organs that inform the thunderwhale about the activity of both preys and predators. So refined are these senses, compared with the weak sight of its ancestors, that adult thunderwhales are completely blind.
Water rushing in the cavelike mouth is pushed out by a massive tongue covered by a keratinous sheath; this sheath rises in comb-like structures that retain food particles ready to be swallowed. The vast fish expels its feces in large pellets; with these (as well as with the corpses that sink as soon as decomposition ruptures their gasbladders), thunderwhales play a crucial role in transferring organic matter, particularly phosphate, to the seafloor, where they feed dark forests of brown algae, and worm-ridden bacterial mats that recall those that ruled the land millions of years before.
When not feeding, thunderwhales retire for days in the cold, dim layers of the sea, calling each other with electric signals. They mate safe from the dangers of the upper waters, releasing vast clouds of eggs that are quickly fertilized and rise to the surface, floating with the plankton until they hatch. Raywings and fish devour most of their number, but enough survive to create a new generation. They exist for many years as larvae in the upper waters, slowly sinking as their adult tissues develop; safe from the hectic pace of mammalian metabolism that cuts short the life of whales, they can last well over 300 years.