Cephalopodcast

I came across the coastal wildlife illustrations of Patrick Lynch over on Flickr. These are taken from his current book, A Field Guide to North Atlantic Wildlife, and its companion on Southeastern and Gulf Coast marine wildlife coming out in 2008.

Lynch is a man of many talents. But it took me a moment to remember where I had seen his name before. Then I remembered he was the illustrator of my ornithology textbook.

In his 35 years with Yale University Lynch has been a medical illustrator, biomedical photographer, audiovisual producer, and for the past 20 years a designer of interactive multimedia teaching, training, and informational software and Web sites.

• Flickr: Coastal wildlife illustrations
• Flickr: Patrick J. Lynch’s photos
• A Field Guide to North Atlantic Wildlife: Marine Mammals, Seabirds, Fish, and Other Sea Life
• Creative Commons medical illustrations
• Wikipedia: Patrick J. Lynch

[via TONMO]

The companion website to Claire Nouvian’s book has a gallery of deep sea critters that you can glance through. Note especially the Dumbo octopus (Grimpoteuthis sp.), Glowing sucker octopus (Stauroteuthis syrtensis), Telescope octopus (Amphitretus pelagicus) and an egg-bearing Black-eyed squid (Gonatus onyx). All very well photographed and tentacley. Splash page includes ethereal, mysterious music too so you know you are underwater.

The Deep
The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
By Claire Nouvian

Featuring 220 color photographs of deep ocean species, some photographed for the first time.

• The website: The Deep
• The book: The Deep
• Tree of Life profile: Amphitretidae, the Telescope octopus
• Bridge Lesson Plans: Deep Sea

Stumbled upon the Glass Jellyfish, a photo album over at PangalacticTrading.com. They are pictures of the works of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. It reminds me a of the delicate glass rotifer sculptures at the American Museum of Natural History.

The second half of the 19th century was a time of great scientific discovery. New museums were being built throughout the world and many existing private museums were opening to the public. New galleries were designed to display the expanding array of known living plants and animals. For many groups of animals this was easily done…But what about soft bodied animals such as jellyfish and sea anemones? Examples of these animals could be pickled in spirit to preserve them, but this in no way reflected their extraordinary appearance in life. Their colours quickly faded and their shapes became distorted as the tissues shrank. Papier-mâché and wax models could not capture their translucence and transparency. Leopold Blaschka, a brilliant glassworker and amateur naturalist, devised a solution to this problem - vividly recreating these life forms modelling them in glass.

• Glass Jellyfish
• Out Of The Teeming Sea: The Life and Work of the Blaschkas
• Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka and natural history in the nineteenth century
• Blaschka on Flickr: Ine Poppe, vmuskie