Steve Haddock

Our science photo book The Radiant Sea is out Sept 2nd!! 30 years of research, 10 years of "we should", and a year of collating pix and writing. Sönke and I show (mostly for the first time) images of how organisms produce, use, and interact with light in the sea. #bioluminescence #fluorescence 🦑🧪🌊

Our new paper in PLoS One on siphonophore genomes, with chromosome-scale genome for Nanomia septata! Led by @nahuja.bsky.social with @dalila-de.bsky.social, @shchurch.bsky.social, @dts.bsky.social and others. doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Claude has updated our sequence deduplication script, and you can download binaries here: github.com/beroe/seqded... This script removes identical sequences from DNA or protein files. For DNA it also checks reverse complements. For protein, it can remove identical sub-strings. Runs multithreaded. 🧪

I am looking for graduate students to join my lab in Fall 2027. If your interests lie within the realms of phylogenetics, macroevolution, and/or invertebrate biodiversity please reach out to me!!

Obsoleting my previous post..! Custom sequence logo generation for proteins is now avaiable through a browser interface, with a dark theme option for your conference presentations. 🧪 beroe.github.io/sequence-log...

I have never liked the style of these protein sequence logos, so I subdued the colors and had Claude make a custom version that can use any typeface. Small details: it does not fatten sans serif 'I' characters and puts a tiny gap between letters. All user configurable. 🧪 github.com/beroe/sequen...

If you’re known by the company you keep, I’m in good shape with this article about ctenophores. Great to be paired up with these luminaries, including @ibudin.bsky.social 🦑🌊🧪

One year ago, The Radiant Sea appeared in print! Still super happy with how it turned out. Our mission to share a different view of ocean life seems to have succeeded.💙 Named a top ten photography book of 2025 by @smithsonianmag.bsky.social, and many anecdotes from people who appreciated it. 🙏 🌊🧪🦑

Attending the 2026 Western Society of Naturalists Meeeting in Sacramento? Consider submitting an abstract to our session on the use of autonomous systems & machine learning in marine science. Research & education talks welcomed. Abstracts due September 9th. www.wsn-online.org/annual-meeti...

5800+ chromosome-scale genomes? ✅ Eye-popping visualizations? ✅ Spanning the entirety of animal evolution? ✅ The latest from Prof. Darrin Schultz and company 🧪

You know that feeling when you’re chasing a dream you’ve had for 20 years, and …. you get stung in the face by a Portuguese man o’war? Same. 🦑🌊🧪

my first 'data descriptor'! hoping this one will be useful for folks interested in tracing the distribution of genomes/genes/proteins over physicochemical gradients in the (deep) marine water column.

Attention fans of #ctenophores 🌊🦑🧪 Please consider joining us at the Ctenopalooza Ctwo conference/celebration in California this August. Support is potentially available for artists and communicators. www.mbari.org/event/ctenop... Register soon or miss out on the fun! Meals included!

A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds? Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines

I am hiring a postdoc for scRNA-seq research in Lund, Sweden on the visual systems of non-model inverts as part of an ERC project on the evolution and ecology of advanced color and polarization vision. Apply here or share the link with someone who may be interested! 🧪 lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Just when you thought one couldn't revolutionize typography, Riley and the Lettermatic team blow your mind! Nearly 750,000 glyphs! But my favorite is Texture Healing. Check it out!

New work for GitHub: Monaspace. 🔤 A superfamily of 5 open-source typefaces for code. Full case study here: lettermatic.com/custom/monas...

(3/10) The Golden Glow Zoantharian is the first documented deep-sea cave species to bioluminesce. www.marinespecies.org/worms-top-te... #toptenmarinespecies #taxonomistappreciationday #OceanDecade #GenOcean

The ocean and all who love it lost an inspiring advocate with the passing this week of Tierney Thys. She brought such joy to the work of protecting and restoring our blue planet. This wonderful tribute from Danielle Thys captures her spirit so beautifully: bit.ly/4s4hVq6

When you zoom out from individual genes to consider the context of whole chromosomes across animal diversity, animal evolution takes on a different look. Oleg Simakov and I published a review in @annualreviews.bsky.social on topological approaches in comparative genomics. 🧬 doi.org/10.1146/annu...

San Francisco-area fans of ocean animals and flashy colors. 🦑🌊🧪 I'll be giving a presentation about our book The Radiant Sea at 1 pm on Saturday Feb 28 at the Book Passage shop in Corte Madera. (Preposition overload!) Swing by and say Hi. www.bookpassage.com/event/steven...

From our new paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... w/ @neurofishh.bsky.social @gkafetzis.bsky.social @denilsson.bsky.social Looking across animals, the vertebrate eye is an obvious outlier. Why is it so different that other highly visual animals?

🧪📍🌊 🦑🍎 We’re excited to announce that we are organizing a second ctenophore meeting — Ctenopalooza Ctwo — to be held at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Monterey Bay, California, on August 23–25, 2026. Registration is now open! www.mbari.org/event/ctenop...

Calling all #ctenophore researchers and artists! Joe Ryan is organizing the Ctenopalooza Ctwo meeting, which we will host at MBARI in California August 23-25. 🦑🧪🌊 www.mbari.org/event/ctenop... Come swap notes with fellow enthusiasts about the latest news in comb jellies.

Under cover of darkness, it's a race to eat before being eaten! Attention #teachers #librarians #ocean lovers! Win a copy of THE OCEAN'S HEART, illus. by Khoa Le! Releasing March 3! 📚👍 kathytemean.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/b... #kidlit #picturebook @pbspree.bsky.social @lernerbooks.bsky.social

Related to high pressure, @ibudin.bsky.social and Jacob Winnikoff led a study which showed that a particular lipid headgroup (PPE) is more abundant in membranes of deep #ctenophores. 🧪🦑 What was amazing was when they put PPE into bacterial membranes, the bacteria became more pressure tolerant!

This is a limited, regionally relevant post, but… I’ll be giving a talk at the Sanctuary Exploration Center in Santa Cruz on Friday Jan 16th. Come say hi if you’re in town. 🦑🧪 (I’m presenting in San Francisco in early Feb as well)

‘Cleave’ can refer to splitting something apart. ‘Cleave’ can also refer to the uniting of two things. …what? A word that is also its own opposite is called a ‘contronym.’

Thrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽

This could be your dream job: working full time at the Friday Harbor Labs on marine invertebrate organismal biology. Nine month salary from an endowment, teaching and research faculty position. apply.interfolio.com/178804

A survey for Ctenophore Ctuesday: * What way is this comb jelly swimming? Up or Down? 🧪🦑🤷‍♂️🌊🤿

OK, this is wild! Smithsonian Magazine included The Radiant Sea in their Best Photography Books of 2025! 😲 From the start, our goal was to entice people with pretty pictures, and then sneak in the science, so to have both appreciated is a complete thrill. 🦑🧪📸 Not bad for a couple biologists :^)

Not to mention… we just had our 4th ever sighting of Haliphron in over 35 years (7000+ ROV dives). Its arms were closed up but we followed it until we could see that it was again holding a jellyfish… m.youtube.com/watch?v=4_lt... See also: www.nature.com/articles/sre...

Our book The Radiant Sea was chosen as one of five "Must Buy" science books by the Wall Street Journal! :^D I don't like to promote Am@z0n, but... it is on sale there for super cheap right now too. Image below showing fluorescence of one of the animals featured in the book. 🦑🧪🌊

First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Apologies that I'm going to be all about THE RADIANT SEA for the foreseeable future, but .... 😉 Our book has been released in the U.K. now and should be available at your local bookshops! 🦑🧪 (with @sonkejo.bsky.social)

Thanks to those of you brave enough to vote. :^) Still time to sway the results with your own thoughts on #ctenophore anatomy. 🦑🧪

Not to hijack this thread, but our book The Radiant Sea includes 35 pages of fluorescent animals (and humans.. and asparagus). Here is a young strawberry squid showing green fluorescence in the eyes and red fluorescent caps on its photophores. 🦑🧪🌊

@sonkejo.bsky.social and I were interviewed by @mdlaplante.bsky.social for his UnDisciplined podcast www.upr.org/podcasts/103... I don’t like hearing myself speak so I haven’t listened back, but my mom “LOVED IT”, so that counts for something. 😉 Support public radio, Utah PR, and @npr.org 🦑🧪🌊

My first sighting of The Radiant Sea in the wild, at our local bookshop. If you have any “encounters” I would love to see them. 🙃 #booksky

Thanks to your incredible support, THE RADIANT SEA is already the top-selling new release in... Entomology? There are going to be some disappointed bug-huggers out there (looking at you @franzanth.bsky.social). 😉 I am hopeful they will warm up to pictures of ocean bugs like Cystisoma.