Currently browsing tag

sea creatures

Blue Planet | Episode 4 | Big Blue

The open ocean may seem like a vast, featureless wasteland to us outsiders, but its inhabits are intrepid navigators that use its structures to embark on some of the most epic journeys known to science. Leatherback turtles have been shown to migrate across the entire Pacific Ocean. Two hatchling leatherbacks were once tracked moving 39km in 34 hours and 82km in 39 hours, an extraordinary distance for a baby weighing less than 40g in one of the first days of its life. Continue reading →

Which came first in whales: extreme breath-hold diving or large body size?

While preparing some size-comparisons of marine life for Week 3 of our free Massive Open Online Course on "Exploring Our Oceans", I was particularly struck by how whales are astounding animals. An adult blue whale can have a body mass of ~150 tonnes. That's around twice the body mass estimated for the largest known dinosaur ever to walk the Earth, and equivalent to the body mass of around 2000 people (i.e. the population of a village, perhaps). Continue reading →

Scariest sea creatures

1. Blobfish Looks harmless, but I do not know what I would do if I found a "brain" swimming next to me... 2. Frilled shark Look at those teeth. And the killer look! 3. Giant squid Just compare the size of the scientists and that of the squid. It's called giant for a good reason. The fact that the pic is black and white makes it even more terrifying (like a Hitchcock movie) 4. Vipefish Thought to put the angler fish, but looking at that picture I changed my mind. 5. Continue reading →