An alert Angler-fish swims in the dark, cool waters nearby the Norway’s Lofoten Islands. The fish has shapeless skin and a distinctive face but is best recognized for its method of feeding itself. While traveling the seafloor, the fish makes use of a built-in rod with a tempting filament “lure” that catches the attention of small fish.
This striking fish has red lips and fins made for wandering the seafloor nearby the Galápagos Islands. The red-lipped batfish is one of various 60 species of Bat-fishes, “flattened” from life on the seafloor and adapted to stroll on modified pectoral and pelvic fins. Like other Angler-fishes, Bat-fishes also use a built-in fishing rod snout, equipped with a retractable appendage, to attract victims near to their lips.
A vibrantly colored clown Frog-fish boasts its stuff on a reef nearby Bali, Indonesia. Members of the Frog-fish family in general keep a much lower profile, depending on the art of camouflage—even changing colors—to maintain out of sight in their reef homes. Frog-fish show off an array of spots, stripes, warts, and other skin irregularities that allow them to try to be like neighboring plants or rocks. Images and Source: ocean.nationalgeographic.com
Atlantic Puffin returning with sand-eels to feed the single chick - image credit
The Atlantic Puffin is the most colorful auk in North Atlantic, with a large and triangular bill that during the breeding season is red, blue and yellow. It fades in the summer when its outer scales are shed. This bird is mainly black above and white below, with grey to white cheeks and bright red-orange legs and feet. The male is in general slightly larger than the female, but they are colored alike. The curious look of the bird, with its colorful bill and its outstanding piebald plumage, has given rise to nicknames such as '"clown of the ocean" and "sea rooster"
The Atlantic Puffin is sexually mature at the age of 4 to 5 years. When nesting, the Puffin excavates a burrow deep in the ground. The burrow is often lined with feathers, seaweed or plant matter. Both parents incubate the single-egg (which is produced each year) and rear the young, carrying many small fish, packed cross-wide into their bills, back to the burrow for it to eat.
These Puffins can dive to depths of up to 70m (200ft) to find the shoaling fish that are its main food. These include sand eels, herring capelins, and sprats which are supplemented by animal plankton in winter.
The Giant oarfish, also known as the King of herrings may well be the longest bony fish alive, reaching an amazing length of up to 17 meters (listed in the Guinness Book of World Records). This astonishing creature is thought to be the inspiration of many myths of sea serpents and sea monsters – even the Loch-Ness monster. To many people, the oarfish may look frightening, but it is in fact harmless - it has no visible teeth and its diet consists of small crustaceans and zooplankton.
Oarfish are actually remarkable creatures. They have long, laterally flattened, silvery blue bodies, and brilliant crimson fins. The first few rays of the long fringing dorsal fin that runs the entire length of the body form a spectacular crest on the head. According to recent accounts, the oarfish maintains a vertical position in the water, propelling itself slowly with rippling movements of the dorsal fin. The long ribbon-like pelvic fins, meanwhile, are held out to the sides as stabilizers.
Sightings of live oartfish are extremely rare - this is because it lives in depths of 300 to 1000 meters and hardly ever appears near surface. Oarfish are most often encountered washed up on land either dead or dying in shallow waters. However, when an oarfish is sighted, it usually stirs considerable public attention, but the species has no commercial value, and its gelatinous flesh is not considered edible.
Winter, who turned 6 in October is a dolphin that was rescued from entangled ropes of a crab trap when she was only two months old (December 17, 2005). After being spotted and caught by a small fishing boat and a Sea World Team, Winter was immediately rushed to Clearwater Marine Aquarium, a marine Hospital. Winter managed to survive the dreadful incident, but unfortunately her tail had to be amputated. At first Winter would have to learn to swim without a tail, forcing her to swim more like a fish (side to side body motion) than a dolphin (up and down body motion), but this unusual movement would damage her spine.
Kevin Carroll and a team of experts from Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, who had previously designed prosthetics for others animals (including dogs, a duck and an ostrich) volunteered to help Winter by designing a special prosthetic tail for her. It took about a year and a half designing and testing a tail for her, but the months of work were worth it. Today Winter is thriving and is using her new tail with great command.
Winter's fame has spread far and wide. Crowds of visitors are traveling to Clearwater to visit the dolphin that has become an inspiration to adults and children alike, especially to children who are amputees themselves. More and more people will definitely visit her after seeing the beautiful movie that was inspired on Winter’s story, titled "Dolphin Tale" (released on September 23, 2011). I have already seen it and I really loved it - Winter plays herself in the movie (see below trailer).
The tale doesn’t end here… Lessons learned from Winter´s prosthetic tail is now being used to make prosthetic limbs more comfortable for human – and animal – amputees. I have attached a touching true story about a lovely young girl called Megan McKoen that went through a terrible experience when she was just 5 months old. Megan experienced difficulties adjusting to her disability, until she met Winter and was fit with a Wintersgel liner. Read more…
One of the main attractions on a beach, especially for children, is playing with the sand. Building sand castles and burying someone up or burying oneself keeps the children entertained during a very long time; however, adults also find it entertaining…
Sand sculpting as an artistic form has become very popular in recent years especially in coastal beach areas. Sand art has progressed well behold simple sand castles. Sand sculpture contests involve large, complex, and extremely sophisticated constructions. Hundreds of annual competitions normally take place on a beach all over the world.
Two basic building ingredients, sand and water from the sea are needed; however, sand grains will not stick together unless the sand is reasonably fine. According to an article that I read, the perfect ration is eight parts dry sand to one part water, depending on the type of sand. The main construction tools used in building sand sculptures are shovels and buckets, though various people use only their hands. Sometimes other pieces of materials are used to reinforce the sculpture.
Beneath the sea lies a wonderland – a dream world of which man had not much knowledge until the creation of the simple goggle, scuba gear (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), flippers and the wet suit. Even the sprouting of wings could not have given man a more breathtaking entrance to another element than did the creation of the diving apparatus. With such equipment man could glide down into the underwater wonderland of the soundless kingdom of fish and coral. Later developments allowed him to wonder virtually at will through the undersea forests of plants, the gardens of anemones, the beautiful shoals of fish and swim liberally in pleasant company with them in a cool world of crystal purity filled with surprises and countless delightful scenes and awesome things…
The first time I ever heard of a Chironex fleckeri, commonly known as the “box jelly fish,” “sea wasp” or “marine stinger,” I was told that it had tremendously powerful venom, and that it could kill in as little as 3 minutes. The box jellyfish is considered the most dangerous jellyfish and one of the most dangerous animals in the world.
A Chironex fleckeri is a type of jellyfish that is shaped like a box. They have four clusters of 15 tentacles trailing from each of the four corners of the jellyfish itself. It is pale blue in color and practically transparent, making it complex for swimmers to see them. They are found in northern Australia and are abundant in the waters during the time of the warmest months (November to April or May). In Australia quite a few measures have been implemented to try to keep people from being exposed to these animals, one of them is to net off the entire swimming areas and to warn people to swim only in those areas during the box jellyfish season. Another thing is the lifeguards wear 1mm Lycra suits, this is enough to protect their skin from being stung by the stinging cells from most breeds of jellyfish.
The stinging cells are very interesting though; they are tiny bags full of venom on the tentacles, so if the skin of their normal prey like shrimp comes into contact with them, they fire off. Once somebody is stung by a jellyfish, the natural reaction is to wipe off the adhering tentacles on the skin. What that does is it exposes more of the person’s skin to other stinging cells that has not fired off yet, so the way to do it is to take them off with tweezers and to add vinegar directly to the area that has the stinging cells. The vinegar will immediately inhibit stinging cells that have not shot off yet. The lifeguards in Australia have vinegar at the lifeguard station so that if this does happen, they will give it as topical treatment, it doesn´t do anything for the stinging cells that have already discharged into the skin, that venom is already on its way, but it does inhibit any of the stinging cells that have not discharged. The descriptions from people that have been stung by a box jellyfish and lived through the experience are very uniform. The stinging produces excruciating pain, more pain than they can even handle, accompanied by an intense burning sensation. Quite often, the bodies reaction to a very large area that’s been stung is to go in anaphylactic shock, which causes somebody to stop breathing, and the heart to stop beating.
Someone would see a jellyfish and assume that it can sting, but this revelation that the box jellyfish can cause death so quickly is surely just shocking for most people. A box jellyfish is simply a glob of jelly that moves around with no brain, no lungs and no heart. This is a very simple, very primitive beast and the fact that it can cause death in people so quickly, is a conundrum. People have a hard time getting their ideas around that, but it’s true. Nevertheles, not all species of box jellyfish are this dangerous to humans.
The above image that you are looking at is a beautiful Blue-ringed Octopus in the sea. These guys are master in camouflage; they can change color as well as skin texture. This color-changing ability is used for protection against predators and also to communicate with or warn other octopuses. In several species, they are capable of taking on the prickly appearance of seaweed or even the uneven texture of a rock, amongst other disguises. On the other hand, other species are limited to relatively pattern less shades of one color, and limited skin texture.
Octopuses move around by crawling or swimming. Some have even been observed walking on two arms, while at the same time resembling plant matter. When they are hungry or in some sort of danger, they flee quickly by swimming headfirst with their eight arms trailing behind and if we are lucky we may get to see what´s called jet propulsion which is the only time you´ll see an octopus go real fast. Most octopuses do not have internal or external skeleton, this enables them to squeeze through very tight places. Another interesting thing about octopuses is that they have three hearts. Two of them pump blood through each of the two gills, and at the same time the third heart pumps blood through the body.
I wouldn’t recommend having these guys as pets because they often escape even from supposedly secure tanks, due to their problem solving skills, mobility and lack of rigid structure. They are capable of breaking out from their aquariums and sometimes into others looking for food. Octopuses have been observed playing in their aquariums by repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current and then catching them. They are highly intelligent creatures, possibly the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
