In a world gone cold, that some animals would find new life in the cold productive waters of the ocean is not surprising. Land-living creatures returning to the water was a constant throughout the reign of the Tetrapods and their honorary descendants have continued this trend with many animals adapting in different ways to access the waters bounty.
The first creature that we meet is the Manasqee. A group of completely aquatic Tusk Grazers evolved from the Squippo well bottom walking forums still exist this group has completely given life on land their legs being too splayed out to move beyond hauling themselves onto riverbanks their 4th pair of limbs have shrunken down to almost being non existant.
ManaSqee’s are a relatively new group mostly confined to the southern continental shelf the shallow seas here provide a bounty of Riceweed and other marine plants that they feed on their tentacle tusks are spiked and surrounded by large cheek flaps to uproot and push water plants into their beaks with a lip sucking motion.
At 10 feet long social animals were females and calves forum social groups Manasqees are mostly invulnerable to predators as stray calves can be struck down by the giants of the brackish waters predators like the Lungestrike.
The Lungestrike is a massive Lungefish a close relative to the Lunge Gar an apex predator that attains lengths of up to 35 feet found in the vast salt marshes of the coastal lowlands and will venture into the sea for periods of time.
Well, the young will eat small fish and insects and work their way up the food chain adults feed on almost exclusively Tera Squid and large piscine prey.
Lungestrikes prefer to hunt on Edge Habitats of marshes or coral reefs where these giant lungfish can slink through reeds and coral out of sight of prey. Like other Lungefish their eyesight is relatively bad and detect prey via smell and electrical pits along their snout.
Lying in ambush the Lungestrike surges forward with a burst of speed bitting into their prey from the side. Double-pointed incisors and tooth plates make it impossible to escape from here the Lungestrike will slink off into the shadows where they shake chunks of meat to be swallowed whole.
Despite being longer than a bus Lungestrikes are rarely seen most of their time is spent in hiding their low-energy lifestyle means they mostly breathe through their gills only surfacing every few hours for atmospheric oxygen.
The last creature we’ll see today is a descendant of the Sock Hop that has completely cut ties to the land.
Sea Hops are slow-moving animals, not true swimmers but with a hollow shell and flap of skin between their back spikes that serve like a life jacket letting the Sea Hop float in the ocean currents their long paddle-like foot provide them the ability to turn themselves in the waves.
A slow-moving cold-blooded animal Sea Hops can often go for long periods without eating an advantage for an animal that can’t swim against the current Sea Hops can be found thousands of miles out at sea lazily bobbing at the surface surviving on nothing but rainwater moving so little that algae often grows on the back of its shell feeding on seagrass and kelp by snipping the tops off as they can no longer sink.
Long voyages over open sea often end in disaster as the largest hoppers at up to 11 feet long they attract attention from large kitefin sharks and marine Blish and that’s for those that make it to adulthood as most of the hundreds of larvae born are plucked off long before they reach maximum size.