Slow Life - Nebulae of Flesh

Good ol' Daniel Stoupin has done it again!

In his last pair of videos, Stoupin got us to take a close look at pond water so we could watch the frantic escapades of water fleas and mosquito larvae. Not to mention some of their internal organs (it really was a very close look). This time around he points at corals and sponges and asks us not only to take a really close look, but to do it for a really long time, too.

Corals and sponges are a lot more colourful than water fleas, yet Stoupin ups the ante with lighting techniques that bring out the florescence that would otherwise be lost on us.

The result is to turn the animals into ethereal, dreamlike landscapes aglow in all the lurid colours of a nebula.

The video begins with the unfurling tentacles of a tube worm and ends with the trembling spines of a sea urchin. Both scenes were shot in real time, while the footage in between is sped up so we can fully appreciate the fact that corals and sponges are truly mounds of beautiful, pulsating flesh.

I LOVE mounds of pulsating flesh! Beauty is cool, too, I suppose.

Video: Daniel Stoupin

It's incredible to think of how much work and technology it took to see this. Microscopes, fancy lighting and speeding it all up... Our eyeballs are boldly going where no eyeballs have gone before!

.....

Deep Sea News has a nice run down of most of the species featured in the video.

And Daniel Stoupin himself considers the slow life. Bacteria that divide once every 10,000 years!