@mbari_news: Floating with our favorite football-shaped friend. 🏈🤩⁠ ⁠ The vampire squid, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, has a grim reputation and name, but these gentle scavengers are "living fossils" that have remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. ⁠ ⁠ This species is the only living member of Vampyromorpha, an ancient cephalopod order that gave rise to both squids and octopuses. Vampire squids are often found in the oxygen minimum zone, an area ranging from 500 to 700 meters deep (1,640 to 2,296 feet) in Monterey Bay, which is very low in dissolved oxygen and hosts very little life within its boundaries.⁠ ⁠ Vampire squid use long feeding filaments to capture marine snow, including gelatinous zooplankton, abandoned larvacean houses, crustacean molts, dead diatoms, and fecal pellets. They can grow up to 30 centimeters (12 inches).