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Ocean Acidification and Shelled Animals: An Indigenous Perspective “We are the ocean, and the ocean is us.”

“Brainy, colorful, fast, sophisticated, strange, inspiring – cephalopods have been on the planet for about 500 million years and have fascinated humans for thousands of year.” Octopus, Squid & Cuttlefish: A Visual, Scientific Guide To The Oceans.

Nature has inspired inventions since the first humans tried to make things. Biomimicry is the practice of looking to nature to help solve design problems. Today scientists and engineers are finding inspiration from animals and plants that may surprise you.

Look carefully at these images.They almost look real. But they are actually astounding glass marine creatures created by the father and son artists/naturalists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. Every time I look at one I am awe struck by the extreme detail. How could they have done this?

Tiny calcium carbonate shells tell us how fast the ocean is acidifying.We were alarmed by recent headlines that said, “Waters Off California Acidifying Faster Than Rest of Oceans, Study Shows.”

This week, a series of large winter storms delivered hundreds of strange rocks riddled with perfectly smooth drill holes. A treasure trove to curious beachcombers, begs the question, “Who or what made all those holes?!”The holes are the work of industrious molluscs called piddock clams or, more commonly, boring clams. Some 16 different species of not-so-boring clams call Monterey Bay home

Dinosaurs are indisputably amazing —their gigantic size, their predatory bent, their mysterious mass extinction. But would you believe that a completely different group of voracious monsters dominated our planet two hundred million years before the first dinosaur evolved? They were cephalopods, the ancestors of today’s squid and octopus. 

By Nancy Burnett, Founder, Shape of Life I just went to a wonderful workshop about plankton. We may as well fess up to the fact that there’s a whole world out there in the ocean that we haven't told you about, yet. Most marine animals that we know and love started out in life looking very different from what they look like as adults.At the beginning of life, they hatch out of eggs that float in the water or are attached to the bottom of the ocean. The tiny larvae feed, grow and change form in the ocean as part of the zooplankton. These fragile, otherworldly creatures swim or drift in the currents for months at a time before settling to the bottom to change into adults.