evidence: Last winter, photographer and marine biologist Solvin Zankl joined a scientific expedition led by the GEOMAR research center in Germany to conduct deep sea biodiversity assessments around the islands of Cape Verde. The team explored the depths with cameras and lights, and used nets to bring an array of strange deep sea creatures to the surface. In his shipboard photography studio—outfitted with special aquariums and a powerful microscope—Zankl set out to capture the unique features and behaviors of these otherworldly organisms. This photo series offers rare glimpses of some of those creatures and the adaptations that enable them to survive and thrive in one of the planet’s most challenging environments. [...] The thieving pram bug (genus Phronima) parades through the sea in a stolen, translucent mobile home. Females devour the gelatinous innards of a jelly-like sea creature known as a salp before crawling inside the salp’s exoskeleton to lay eggs. The female hangs on to the hollowed nursery with hooked claws, and propels it through the water to provide her larvae with a constant flow of water and food.