
They've been out to sea again recently.
The National Geographic legendary couple
David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes.
David Doubilet with sharks
Image source: underseaimagesinc.com
Jennifer Hayes with crocodiles
Photo by DAVID DOUBILET
David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes, who have long been legends in the underwater photography world, have worked with his wife Jennifer Hayes to produce more than 70 picture stories and several books for National Geographic, exploring countless unique marine environments and taking countless images of rare marine life – this time, they have joined forces again, ocean night diving, illuminating the "elves" of the deep sea in the endless darkness.
Sharks in the deep sea glow: the picture shows the lantern crow shark (Etmopterus lucifer), which inhabits the deep sea 150-1250 meters below and is nearly half a meter long. Jérôme Mallefet, a researcher at the University of Leuven, estimates that more than 10% of the 540 known shark species are bioluminescent; dalatias licha, for example, the 1.8-meter-long armored shark (Dalatias licha) also emits blue light, and is one of the largest known luminous animals in the world.
Photograph by JÉRÔME MallEFET
The oceans account for 97% of the earth's water resources, starting from 200 meters underwater, that is, entering the low-light belt and the non-light belt, where the sea water has become a black "ink" that we know very little. According to an article published on the Nature website on April 4, 2017, 3/4 of deep-sea creatures can bioluminescent, or attract prey, or deter enemies, or attract the opposite sex.
Anglerfish, also known as trout, live at 2-500 meters underwater, and in the lightless zone of the deep sea, they attract prey by bioluminescence
摄影:NORBERT WU,MINDEN PICTURES / NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
In fact, if you want to experience the magic of the sea creatures without light, you don't need to dive to less than 200 meters inaccessible - when night falls, even if it is 30 meters below the sea, it becomes a kaleidoscope under the night.
This is a juvenile horned box pufferfish the size of a coin off the coast of Indonesia, inhabiting depths of 18-100 meters
Photograph by JENNIFER HAYES
In the deep seas of Indiania, a squid cruising across the ocean spews ink
Photograph by JENNIFER HAYES AND DAVID DOUBILET
A juvenile alligator in the Philippines, inhabiting a depth of 20-100 meters, the fins behind it make it resemble a jellyfish, which may have the effect of deterring night sea predators
David Doubilet said diving in open waters after sunset is like —
"I'm sitting in the VIP seat,
Watch the world's strangest animal parade."
When night falls on the high seas, zooplankton swim from the deep sea to shallower waters to feed, making it the meal of this juvenile mantis shrimp
A submarine rope embellished with lamp beads quietly sinks into the 30 meters of water, and when night falls, even if the water is not too deep, it becomes "thick ink" in seconds. David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes, armed with full scubas, densely packed lamps and sLRs buckled to a wetsuit, descend into the magnificent "Kingdom of the Night Sea".
(※ Divers will put a rope dotted with bright lights into the sea; the rope connects the buoy to the surface of the sea; the diver and their boats will face the light to avoid getting lost in the night sea)
The new gill bottle, a gel-like invertebrate, varies in size from the size of a fingernail to more than 30 meters long. The gill bottles are clustered together and connected to each other to form a beam-emitting chain that uses electrical signals to synchronize their movements.
After nightfall, zooplankton swim from the deep sea to shallow water to feed, such as jellyfish in the picture above, and juvenile scorpionfish surrounded by shrimp-shaped footstock in the picture below.
"The night sea is fascinating, but it often makes the photographer touch the nail, because many animals are both small and agile. Sometimes you're busy focusing, and it twists around and you may not be able to shoot it. ”
The picture shows the egg mass of a certain organism
Photographed in Anilo, Philippines, the lighthouse jellyfish, "rejuvenation, immortality", the general jellyfish will die after sexual reproduction; while the lighthouse jellyfish can return to the "hydra type", and countless cycles, to obtain "immortality", this immortal mystery is still a mystery.
Sea butterflies
Flying fish off the sea of Bermuda, they can spread their pectoral fins like wings and can glide more than 200 meters in the air
"It's like going to the galaxy."
Doubilet describes ocean-going night diving this way. The couple captured the rare juvenile appearance of many creatures, but as the currents pushed them farther and farther away, they had to pay attention to the direction in which the bubbles were floating, in order to distinguish between up and down; they also had to stare at the lights on the submarine ropes so as not to drift too far away from the ship.
This adult trevally not only uses jellyfish to hide, but also "drives" it like a speedboat. Jellyfish cause predators to retreat, while juveniles eat parasites from jellyfish.
To survive the long night safely, a juvenile trevally rode on the back of a moon jellyfish
The juvenile hides itself inside the jellyfish
A foot-like creature rides on a jellyfish
David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes are exploring the deep sea under the night, which is really yearning, and Ryo Minemizu, a Contributor to National Geographic from Japan, is also obsessed with this, but he is used to enjoying the "kaleidoscope of the deep sea" alone.
A juvenile-like diamond-finned squid
Photographed by RYO MINEMIZU
At sunset, when the tide recedes off the coast of Japan, Ryo Minemizu, an underwater photographer specializing in science, propped up a tripod on the seabed near the breeding area of the fish and then installed 30 colored LED lights; next, for several hours, he would wait for the lights to attract beautiful plankton, and then shoot with macro or wide-angle lenses according to their size.
The average length of these larvae is 1-4 cm, and some are even only 2 mm. That said, the pictures of these zooplankton that we see have been magnified many times over.
A beautiful starworm larvae float in the water, and the adult starworms are slender
The juvenile form of a half-mouthed magnificent jellyfish
This is a gastropod larvae that moves through a ciliated stretch membrane
A crystal nine-horned jellyfish in the stage of sexual reproduction
A larvae of a sea anemone
A file clam larvae
A flying fish larvae
Ryo Minemizu has been diving and photographing off the coast of Japan for more than 20 years, "I want as many people as possible to see the beautiful marine world. Minezimu hopes that his work will spark interest in marine life and the importance of its protection.
But now, 11,000 meters underwater, in the Mariana Trench of "eternal night", plastic pollution is still spreading, poisoning those who are "hidden deep enough", and once the plastic particles sink to the deepest seabed, they have nowhere to go.
This shrimp-like patch-footed creature is eating microplastics on the ocean floor, and they are found even in the deepest seabed known to man. A British team of researchers captured them from the world's 6 deepest trenches and found that most of them had eaten plastic – 80 percent of them.
Photographed by DAVID SHALE
Purchase the 2022 National Geographic Chinese calendar
※Shipments will not be made to Tibet in Xinjiang and areas affected by the epidemic
If you read this article