Imagine meeting this creature - this photo was released by Census of Marine Life and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - it shows a transparent sea cucumber, Enypniastes, creeping forward on its many tentacles at about 2 cm per minute while sweeping detritus-rich sediment into its mouth at 2,750 meters in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of marine species eke out an existence in the ocean's pitch-black depths by feeding on the snowlike decaying matter that cascades down, and even sunken whale bones.
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