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Why holes at the bottom of the ocean disappear and reappear (atlasobscura.com)
87 points by jyunwai on Jan 19, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 16 comments



In Puget Sound, there are areas where gray whales feed on buried prey in tidal zones specifically the beach at Langley) where they basically wind up liquefying the sand, sucking out the food, and letting it all settle back down.

Then, when the tide is out, there are these slightly depressed poorly consolidated areas that are effectively quicksand -- you can go from hard sand to knee deep in a few feet/seconds.


Nice illustration of the scientific process that's not so abstract that even other Biologists wouldn't understand, as is often the case in other fields. Very cool!


Some types of pufferfish are known to build complex circular nests to attract mates and protect their eggs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOGvVn7IWVY

And a lovely song about it: https://moulettes.bandcamp.com/track/pufferfish-love


What a fascinating reason.


Bottlenose dolphins can do this also. They definitely eat eels.


Purposely made!


Porpoisely!


TL;DR : Eels hid beneath the sand, porpoise drags them out creating a 'hole'


It always baffled me why only 1 type of dolphin is showcased in every damn documentary. This one looks so cool.


And it's very shy apparently. Even as someone from the more northern parts of Germany, I didn't know that these creatures lived there!


Endangered and elusive, but not as critical as is smaller Californian cousin. Very cute animals.


Yet it is just a hypothesis at this point with no direct evidence (such as photos)


As stated by the article. To be fair, I also don't always RTFA.


[flagged]


Please don't post memes to HN.


Someone's humorous aside is not a meme.


the funny thing isn’t even the meme, it’s that GP posted at least one meme-y response of his own to a separate story AFTER getting butthurt about a kaiju joke.




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