Serina: White-Beaked Calacarna

This is the species of calacarna which appears in the background of the Oceans scene chasing the school of escardines. It didn't have a description written yet so it didn't actually appear in the compilation, unlike the kraviathan.

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During the hothouse age, the rising sea levels flooded the fringes of the continental shelves, it created a series of warm, shallow seas which now cover many tens of thousands of square miles, but never get below sixty metres in depth, allowing sunlight to penetrate all the way to the seafloor. In total, they cover an area equal to the size of either continent, and host ecosystems every bit as productive and diverse as anything inland, if not more so. Vast forests of kelp-like seaweeds and snail reefs form underwater jungles hosting countless thousands of species of marine animals.

One of the principle mesopredatory hunters of these waters are the calacarnas, the fast-moving, warm-blooded, pelagic snarks, with torpedo-shaped bodies and two pairs of broad fins for propelling them through the water column at unparalleled speed. They are one of the most intelligent invertebrates and highly social, travelling in shoals and coordinating their hunting tactics towards their favoured prey, the flitting schools of reef-dwelling fish and smaller snarks which occur in their countless millions, their numbers fed by the plankton blooms that abound year-round in the equatorial waters.

The white-beaked calacarna is an archetype species of the group, with long, toothed mandibles for snatching and grasping small, smooth prey. Large, wing-like front fins are their primary means of propulsion, while the back pair are normally used only for steering, only providing an extra burst of speed during a pursuit. The white-beaked calacarna is specialized to hunt in the crowded underwater halls and under-storeys of the algal forests and spiralling reefs, and as such has a far more flexible body and broader fins for greater agility and turning speed than its open-water relatives. These are also an opportunistic species; the longer spike-like serrations at the end of their mandibles are used like grappling tongs for rooting through crevices and within reef shells for prey hiding out of reach.

Hunting in less open environments where shoals of prey tend to be smaller and more scattered, their shoal numbers are also much smaller on average than calacarna species that hunt in deeper waters, rarely greater than groups of eight adults. However, their groups are more loosely associated and often part of a much large community spread over a large area and often numbering over one-hundred individuals total, and members will often swap between packs on a daily basis. Their size is also smaller on average, usually reaching about five feet in length.