This school of scalloped hammerheads was not a sight we expected to see, but what a sight it was! Experts are actually unsure why scalloped hammerheads school, but some theorize they school this way as juveniles, and continue the behavior into young adulthood!
MORE BEASTS OF THE BLOOD SEA. Well actually just whales, very pink ones to! The usual info dump is found below!
The Blushing Fluke is a large whale belonging to a larger group of baleenless baleen whales of the Atlantic. Flukes are divided into two main groups, which habit different areas of the Atlantic. Which by the by is divided in two by a scab field into the sunless Northern Atlantic Fester and the Eternal Hemorrhage, which is slowly diluting back into the global sea.
These fellas inhabit the Fester! Here the air is frigid and the blood is hot! Being that these guys are huge they struggle with the problem of overheating in the 93 degree blood bath. Their solution is the ability to inflate and hold their tongues up and out of the sea. The blood engorged organ is chilled by the freezing air and they cool right on down. This solution helps them maintain their large size while subsisting off the blood around them, simply swimming along slurping up the cooler surface ichor as they go. The large size is moreso to ward off predators, the fester is home to the Atlantic's immune system, which does not take kindly to animals eating it. Their large size lets them take a bit of a beating before they outrun their attackers, the macro-macrophages if you would.
🌑 Black beauty! This manta is an example of the uncommon melanistic manta - a color mutation that results in more dark pigmentation than normal (like the opposite of albinism, which is a lack of pigmentation!) It lacks the white chevron on its back and white belly, making it truly striking.