How a Blobfish (a Deep Sea Fish) Looks with and without the Extreme Water Pressure.
Imagine being dragged away from your home up 3000 feet, having the rapid decompression completely destroy your body, just for the fisherman to call you the ugliest fish on the planet
Hold up for a minute. 3000 feet of water exerts way more pressure than 3000 feet of atmosphere. A quick Google shows the density of seawater being 1.0273 g/cm3 while our atmosphere has a density of 0.00125 g/cm3 .
If we divide the density of seawater by the density of our atmosphere at sea level we end up with 821.84. If we then multiply the original 3000 feet by 821.84 we should be able to estimate a comparable altitude change through air based on pressure exerted.
The final result is 2,465,520 feet. And that doesn’t even account for the density of the atmosphere changing as you get higher up.
So if we ignore what we know about space and just assume our atmosphere permeates the entire solar system while still somehow maintaining it’s standard pressure at sea level we could make the analogy that in order for a human to experience what a blobfish does, that human would need to be pulled from the surface of the planet to roughly 467 miles above the surface of the earth.
Honestly the next step is to catch this transformation on video one time, people will feel bad and want to fight against it.
Imagine if humans were named based on how we looked after aliens yanked us off the planet and into outer space.
“We call this one the sadjack. While appearing to have crippling depressing, this creature spends most its time masterbating. While most other species focus on food and interaction to survive, the sadjack only thrives on naps and self pleasure and is only known to eat at late hours of the night consuming low nutrition food. “
Could be wrong but IIRC we wouldn’t explode but asphyxiate and our skin would end up taking on a red sunburnt hue due to the radiation and any moisture on exposed surfaces would evaporate rapidly due to the lack of an atmosphere so which would cause your eyes to go red….
so Red eyed/ red skinned bug eyed Sapien probably.
This strange species, know as Homofrozenice is named for it’s solid frozen state.
This is an apt analogy, by ut keep in mind that the pressure of the ocean is EXTREME. The pressure difference between the earth’s surface and outer space is approximately 1 atm. This is the same as the pressure difference between the ocean surface and 10 m (~30 feet) below the surface (!).
This means that the pressure difference this fish experienced while being pulled up is around 100 times the pressure difference between the surface of the earth and space!!
Don’t underestimate the ocean peeps!
its called blobfish because it has gelatinous flesh, low muscle mass, and no skeleton, not because of what it looks like depressurized
Blobfish live in water pressures 60-120 times greater than at sea level. They lack both bones and teeth and have a very low muscle mass. This means that they do not actively hunt and instead, they drift along the seafloor, picking up mostly small creatures like crabs and shellfish.
Interestingly, they do not possess a swim bladder – air sacs that allows fish to maneuver accurately in the water – and instead, they rely on their very gelatinous flesh (at a similar density to the surrounding water) to keep them at the correct depth.
Although Blobfish as a whole are a mystery to scientists, it is known that during breeding the females lay thousands of eggs (up to 108,000) and that they have complex nesting behaviors. For example, both the female and male will “nest” on the eggs, lying on top of them for protection. Not only that, the fish have been know to clean the eggs, removing dirt and other imperfections. Considering there is a very large necessity to conserve energy for all deep-water species, and given that Blobfish do not actively hunt, flee (or more broadly, move with purpose) it is odd that they show such extravagant breeding practices.
Blobfish are considered endangered. They do not have predators and do not generally have an instinct to flee so as a result, they are often pulled up by ocean floor trawlers, dying in the process. ⠀
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