Trawling the deep ocean ought to be banned. These ecosystems regenerate extremely slowly because they're so poor in nutrients and sunlight.

When it comes to many ocean fisheries, we are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, unfortunately.

Take for example slimeheads (marketed as "orange roughy" in the USA). These fish live deep in the ocean, can take decades to reach reproductive maturity and a marketable size, and can live up to 149 years. Harvested by bottom trawling, their commercial exploitation causes tremendous damage to the seafloor. Just some food for thought the next time you sit down in a restaurant and dine on a fish that is likely older than your parents.

They aren't even good fish to eat.

High in mercury, low in omega-3 acids. And being from the twilight zone, something tells me it will taste like all the other scavenger-type fish and sea creatures.

Only reason to eat one over a farmed salmon would be for the novelty factor.

Unfortunately as many waters have been overfished and thus are no longer productive, trawlers have to go deeper and deeper to keep our supermarkets well stocked with endangered seafoods like Halibut.

Your general point is correct, but Halibut is not endangered. Seafood Watch lists some types of Halibut as a "Good Alternative".

http://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-recommendations/groups/h...

There's perhaps disagreement about this, but Atlantic Halibut is classified as endangered (IUCN Red list) and is also on Greenpeace's red list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_halibut

In any case, nobody would disagree that Halibut stocks have been depleted (or even eradicated) in many areas where it was once plentiful.

The top scariest are:

1. The Chimera: https://twitter.com/rfedortsov/status/808018055905349637

and

2. The Cyclops: https://twitter.com/rfedortsov/status/811778971075547136

They make the alien in Alien look practically warm and fuzzy.

Some are close enough that they're believed to have inspired the xenomorphs directly

http://www.livescience.com/43076-meet-phronima-the-barrel-ri...

I think this is a myth that gets propogated online without any citations. Giger's "Necronom IV" painting from 1976[0] was the inspiration of the xenomorph in "Alien". Is there any evidence this painting was in turn inspired by deep undersea creatures?

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/db/H.R._Giger_-_...

I believe the article I linked mentioned the thought being that it was the queen from Aliens, not the original xenomorph. I also wouldn't be surprised to find it to be untrue altogether, thus the "believed to be" phrasing.

Imgur gallery: http://imgur.com/gallery/CWOr8

Many of them are abyssal species, I wonder how deep are they trawling.

It is fascinating, yet sad to see so many endangered species if you go on his instagram feed. For instance the Ocean sunfish: https://youtu.be/ddUJT0i9sCM?t=59

Wow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoplight_loosejaw

"Malacosteus and the related genera ... are the only fishes that produce red bioluminescence. As most of their prey organisms are not capable of perceiving light at those wavelengths, this allows Malacosteus to hunt with an essentially invisible beam of light. Furthermore, Malacosteus is unique amongst animals in using a chlorophyll derivative to perceive red light."

HN mostly puts down reddit, but: https://www.reddit.com/r/deepseacreatures/

That sub has posts of "dead dragons" and "mermaids"...

My eyes are rolling so hard right now.

Business Insider has been posting an awful lot of clickbait lately.

By lately do you mean 7 years? Clickbait has been their entire business model from pretty much day 1.

To their credit, BI's clickbait headline writing skills are stronger and their thesaurus of adverbs thicker than many competitor sites.

Plus you'll never guess this one amazing thing BI does that skyrocketed them to among the best in the industry at headlines...

Fortunately their anti-adblock tech prevents me from wasting any more time on their site.

What do you find clickbait about this article's title in particular? The 'nightmarish' part?

Extremely fascinating. Seeing the alien-ness of the creatures, I wonder if any fiction writers have written well-researched stories set in this portion of the ocean? Seems like it would make for a fascinating setting.

What always blows my mind is that these most alien looking creatures are not alien at all. We share DNA with them and are evolved for the same planet.

Which begs the question, what would actual aliens look like?

Would parallel evolution produce familiar looking creatures or something much much stranger? I imagine it's something that sci-fi authors spend a bit of time thinking about.

There's a great book about this called "Life Beyond Earth" by Gerald Feinberg and Robert Shapiro. It discusses possibilities ranging from silicon-based life to plasma-based and even radiation-based life. It's not speculative, but since it's rather old the science in it may be dated.

It's worth reading if you're interested in this topic.

I'd also recommend Greg Egan's diaspora, it presents some interesting ideas around forms alien species might take. I don't want to give anything away, but the author takes things a few steps further than most sci-fi about exploring the universe(s).

Starfish by Peter Watts (and a couple sequels).

I don't really remember how much creatures feature in the book though.

It would be a great setting / inspiration for a video game, too.

I guess Bioshock is the first under-the-sea game that springs to mind for me.

It's a brilliant game series but I don't remember seeing any mad undersea creatures in it.

probably not well researched, but there is a rich vein of deep sea horror/SF stories (Leviathan and The Abyss come to mind).

It is in the end as alien as outer space, and even less explored.

I would be scared about toxicity, is that not a possible problem?

Given that he's holding with bare hands... I would never do that. Just one specime with poison or something line that, and you're done.

A fisherman's hands are almost as good as gloves. Not much going to get through that hide.

spiegel.de had a biologist classify these creatures (in German, [1]); Google's translation ([2]) probably won't make sense, though.

[1]: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/russland-fischer-fa...

[2]: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=h...

Reminds me of second episode of this documentary (2001): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Planet

I hate the sea, and everything in it.

Take comfort in knowing that it hates you, too.

And know that it's waiting for you. It's very good at waiting.

ok