Marine invertebrates exhibit a wide range of modifications to survive in poorly oxygenated waters, including breathing tubes as in mollusc siphons. Fish have gills instead of lungs, although some species of fish, such as the lungfish, have both. Marine mammals (e.g. dolphins, whales, otters, and seals) need to surface periodically to breathe air. (Full article...)
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The pigeye shark or Java shark (Carcharhinus amboinensis) is an uncommon species of requiem shark, in the family Carcharhinidae, found in the warm coastal waters of the eastern Atlantic and western Indo-Pacific. It prefers shallow, murky environments with soft bottoms, and tends to roam within a fairly localised area. With its bulky grey body, small eyes, and short, blunt snout, the pigeye shark looks almost identical to (and is often confused with) the better-known bull shark (C. leucas). The two species differ in vertebral count, the relative sizes of the dorsal fins, and other subtle traits. This shark typically reaches lengths of 1.9–2.5 m (6.2–8.2 ft).
The pigeye shark is an apex predator that mostly hunts low in the water column. It has a varied diet, consisting mainly of bony and cartilaginous fishes and also including crustaceans, molluscs, sea snakes, and cetaceans. This species gives birth to live young, with the developing embryos sustained to term via a placental connection to their mother. Litters of three to thirteen pups are born after a gestation period of nine or twelve months. Young sharks spend their first few years of life in sheltered inshore habitats such as bays, where their movements follow tidal and seasonal patterns. The pigeye shark's size and dentition make it potentially dangerous, though it has not been known to attack humans. The shark is infrequently caught in shark nets protecting beaches and by fisheries, which use it for meat and fins. The IUCN presently assesses this species as vulnerable. (Full article...)
Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquaticplacentalmarine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins and porpoises may be considered whales from a formal, cladistic perspective. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest non-cetacean living relatives are the hippopotamuses, from which they and other cetaceans diverged about 54 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have had their last common ancestor around 34 million years ago. Mysticetes include four extant (living) families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), and Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale). Odontocetes include the Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales), as well as the six families of dolphins and porpoises which are not considered whales in the informal sense.
Whales are fully aquatic, open-ocean animals: they can feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 tonnes (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the largest known animal that has ever lived. The sperm whale is the largest toothed predator on Earth. Several whale species exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that the females are larger than males. (Full article...)
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Monk seals are earless seals of the tribeMonachini. They are the only earless seals found in tropical climates. The two genera of monk seals, Monachus and Neomonachus, comprise three species: the Mediterranean monk seal, Monachus monachus; the Hawaiian monk seal, Neomonachus schauinslandi; and the Caribbean monk seal, Neomonachus tropicalis, which became extinct in the 20th century. The two surviving species are now rare and in imminent danger of extinction. All three monk seal species were classified in genus Monachus until 2014, when the Caribbean and Hawaiian species were placed into a new genus, Neomonachus.
Monk seals have a slender body and are agile. They have a broad, flat snout with nostrils on the top. Monk seals are polygynous, and group together in harems. They feed mainly on bony fish and cephalopods, but they are opportunistic. The skin is covered in small hairs, which are generally black in males and brown or dark gray in females. Monk seals are found in the Hawaiian archipelago, certain areas in the east Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea (such as Cabo Blanco and Gyaros island), and formerly in the tropical areas of the west Atlantic Ocean. (Full article...)
Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) is an extinctsirenian described by Georg Wilhelm Steller in 1741. At that time, it was found only around the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia; its range extended across the North Pacific during the Pleistoceneepoch, and likely contracted to such an extreme degree due to the glacial cycle. It is possible indigenous populations interacted with the animal before Europeans. Steller first encountered it on Vitus Bering's Great Northern Expedition when the crew became shipwrecked on Bering Island. Much of what is known about its behavior comes from Steller's observations on the island, documented in his posthumous publication On the Beasts of the Sea. Within 27 years of its discovery by Europeans, the slow-moving and easily-caught mammal was hunted into extinction for its meat, fat, and hide.
Some 18th-century adults would have reached weights of 8–10 t (8.8–11.0 short tons) and lengths up to 9 m (30 ft). It was a member of the family Dugongidae, of which the 3 m (9.8 ft) long dugong (Dugong dugon) is the sole living member. It had a thicker layer of blubber than other members of the order, an adaptation to the cold waters of its environment. Its tail was forked, like that of whales or dugongs. Lacking true teeth, it had an array of white bristles on its upper lip and two keratinous plates within its mouth for chewing. It fed mainly on kelp, and communicated with sighs and snorting sounds. Steller believed it was a monogamous and social animal living in small family groups and raising its young, similar to modern sirenians. (Full article...)
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Millepora alcicornis, or sea ginger, is a species of colonialfire coral with a calcareous skeleton. It is found on shallow water coral reefs in the tropical west Atlantic Ocean. It shows a variety of different morphologies depending on its location. It feeds on plankton and derives part of its energy requirements from microalgae found within its tissues. It is an important member of the reef building community and subject to the same threats as other corals. It can cause painful stings to unwary divers. (Full article...)
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Bottlenose dolphin surfing in the wake of a research boat
Numerous investigations of bottlenose dolphin intelligence have been conducted, examining mimicry, use of artificial language, object categorization, and self-recognition. They can use tools (sponging; using marine sponges to forage for food sources they normally could not access) and transmit cultural knowledge from generation to generation, and their considerable intelligence has driven interaction with humans. Bottlenose dolphins gained popularity from aquarium shows and television programs such as Flipper. They have also been trained by militaries to locate sea mines or detect and mark enemy divers. In some areas, they cooperate with local fishermen by driving fish into their nets and eating the fish that escape. Some encounters with humans are harmful to the dolphins: people hunt them for food, and dolphins are killed inadvertently as a bycatch of tuna fishing and by getting caught in crab traps. (Full article...)
Phoronids (scientific name Phoronida, sometimes called horseshoe worms) are a small phylum of marine animals that filter-feed with a lophophore (a "crown" of tentacles), and build upright tubes of chitin to support and protect their soft bodies. They live in most of the oceans and seas, including the Arctic Ocean but excluding the Antarctic Ocean, and between the intertidal zone and about 400 meters down. Most adult phoronids are 2 cm long and about 1.5 mm wide, although the largest are 50 cm long.
Starfish or sea stars are star-shapedechinoderms belonging to the classAsteroidea (/ˌæstəˈrɔɪdiə/). Common usage frequently finds these names being also applied to ophiuroids, which are correctly referred to as brittle stars or basket stars. Starfish are also known as asteroids due to being in the class Asteroidea. About 1,900 species of starfish live on the seabed in all the world's oceans, from warm, tropical zones to frigid, polar regions. They are found from the intertidal zone down to abyssal depths, at 6,000 m (20,000 ft) below the surface.
Starfish are marine invertebrates. They typically have a central disc and usually five arms, though some species have a larger number of arms. The aboral or upper surface may be smooth, granular or spiny, and is covered with overlapping plates. Many species are brightly coloured in various shades of red or orange, while others are blue, grey or brown. Starfish have tube feet operated by a hydraulic system and a mouth at the centre of the oral or lower surface. They are opportunistic feeders and are mostly predators on benthic invertebrates. Several species have specialized feeding behaviours including eversion of their stomachs and suspension feeding. They have complex life cycles and can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Most can regenerate damaged parts or lost arms and they can shed arms as a means of defense. The Asteroidea occupy several significant ecological roles. Starfish, such as the ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus) and the reef sea star (Stichaster australis), have become widely known as examples of the keystone species concept in ecology. The tropical crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) is a voracious predator of coral throughout the Indo-Pacific region, and the Northern Pacific seastar is on the list of the World's 100 Worst Invasive Alien Species. (Full article...)
Bivalvia (/baɪˈvælviə/), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, bivalves have no head and they lack some usual molluscan organs, like the radula and the odontophore. The class includes the clams, oysters, cockles, mussels, scallops, and numerous other families that live in saltwater, as well as a number of families that live in freshwater. The majority are filter feeders. The gills have evolved into ctenidia, specialised organs for feeding and breathing. Most bivalves bury themselves in sediment, where they are relatively safe from predation. Others lie on the sea floor or attach themselves to rocks or other hard surfaces. Some bivalves, such as the scallops and file shells, can swim. Shipworms bore into wood, clay, or stone and live inside these substances.
The shell of a bivalve is composed of calcium carbonate, and consists of two, usually similar, parts called valves. These valves are for feeding and for disposal of waste. These are joined together along one edge (the hinge line) by a flexible ligament that, usually in conjunction with interlocking "teeth" on each of the valves, forms the hinge. This arrangement allows the shell to be opened and closed without the two halves detaching. The shell is typically bilaterally symmetrical, with the hinge lying in the sagittal plane. Adult shell sizes of bivalves vary from fractions of a millimetre to over a metre in length, but the majority of species do not exceed 10 cm (4 in). (Full article...)
Biological oceanography is the study of how organisms affect and are affected by the physics, chemistry, and geology of the oceanographic system. Biological oceanography may also be referred to as ocean ecology, in which the root word of ecology is Oikos (oικoσ), meaning ‘house’ or ‘habitat’ in Greek. With that in mind, it is of no surprise then that the main focus of biological oceanography is on the microorganisms within the ocean; looking at how they are affected by their environment and how that affects larger marine creatures and their ecosystem. Biological oceanography is similar to marine biology, but is different because of the perspective used to study the ocean. Biological oceanography takes a bottom-up approach (in terms of the food web), while marine biology studies the ocean from a top-down perspective. Biological oceanography mainly focuses on the ecosystem of the ocean with an emphasis on plankton: their diversity (morphology, nutritional sources, motility, and metabolism); their productivity and how that plays a role in the global carbon cycle; and their distribution (predation and life cycle). (Full article...)
Image 1A 2016 metagenomic representation of the tree of life using ribosomal protein sequences. The tree includes 92 named bacterial phyla, 26 archaeal phyla and five eukaryotic supergroups. Major lineages are assigned arbitrary colours and named in italics with well-characterized lineage names. Lineages lacking an isolated representative are highlighted with non-italicized names and red dots. (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 2Biomass pyramids. Compared to terrestrial biomass pyramids, aquatic pyramids are generally inverted at the base. (from Marine food web)
Image 3Coral reefs provide marine habitats for tube sponges, which in turn become marine habitats for fishes (from Marine habitat)
Image 4An in situ perspective of a deep pelagic food web derived from ROV-based observations of feeding, as represented by 20 broad taxonomic groupings. The linkages between predator to prey are coloured according to predator group origin, and loops indicate within-group feeding. The thickness of the lines or edges connecting food web components is scaled to the log of the number of unique ROV feeding observations across the years 1991–2016 between the two groups of animals. The different groups have eight colour-coded types according to main animal types as indicated by the legend and defined here: red, cephalopods; orange, crustaceans; light green, fish; dark green, medusa; purple, siphonophores; blue, ctenophores and grey, all other animals. In this plot, the vertical axis does not correspond to trophic level, because this metric is not readily estimated for all members. (from Marine food web)
Image 7Sandy shores provide shifting homes to many species (from Marine habitat)
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Different bacteria shapes (cocci, rods and spirochetes) and their sizes compared with the width of a human hair. A few bacteria are comma-shaped (vibrio). Archaea have similar shapes, though the archaeon Haloquadratum is flat and square.
The unit μm is a measurement of length, the micrometer, equal to 1/1,000 of a millimeter
Parasitic chytrids can transfer material from large inedible phytoplankton to zooplankton. Chytrids zoospores are excellent food for zooplankton in terms of size (2–5 μm in diameter), shape, nutritional quality (rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and cholesterols). Large colonies of host phytoplankton may also be fragmented by chytrid infections and become edible to zooplankton. (from Marine fungi)
Image 13Estuaries occur when rivers flow into a coastal bay or inlet. They are nutrient rich and have a transition zone which moves from freshwater to saltwater. (from Marine habitat)
Image 14Common-enemy graph of Antarctic food web. Potter Cove 2018. Nodes represent basal species and links indirect interactions (shared predators). Node and link widths are proportional to number of shared predators. Node colors represent functional groups. (from Marine food web)
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The global continental shelf, highlighted in light green, defines the extent of marine coastal habitats, and occupies 5% of the total world area
Image 16Topological positions versus mobility: (A) bottom-up groups (sessile and drifters), (B) groups at the top of the food web. Phyto, phytoplankton; MacroAlga, macroalgae; Proto, pelagic protozoa; Crus, Crustacea; PelBact, pelagic bacteria; Echino, Echinoderms; Amph, Amphipods; HerbFish, herbivorous fish; Zoopl, zooplankton; SuspFeed, suspension feeders; Polych, polychaetes; Mugil, Mugilidae; Gastropod, gastropods; Blenny, omnivorous blennies; Decapod, decapods; Dpunt, Diplodus puntazzo; Macropl, macroplankton; PlFish, planktivorous fish; Cephalopod, cephalopods; Mcarni, macrocarnivorous fish; Pisc, piscivorous fish; Bird, seabirds; InvFeed1 through InvFeed4, benthic invertebrate feeders. (from Marine food web)
Image 17Halfbeak as larvae are one of the organisms adapted to the unique properties of the microlayer (from Marine habitat)
Image 18Schematic representation of the changes in abundance between trophic groups in a temperate rocky reef ecosystem. (a) Interactions at equilibrium. (b) Trophic cascade following disturbance. In this case, the otter is the dominant predator and the macroalgae are kelp. Arrows with positive (green, +) signs indicate positive effects on abundance while those with negative (red, -) indicate negative effects on abundance. The size of the bubbles represents the change in population abundance and associated altered interaction strength following disturbance. (from Marine food web)
Image 19Antarctic marine food web. Potter Cove 2018. Vertical position indicates trophic level and node widths are proportional to total degree (in and out). Node colors represent functional groups. (from Marine food web)
Image 21Phylogenetic and symbiogenetic tree of living organisms, showing a view of the origins of eukaryotes and prokaryotes (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 22Jellyfish are easy to capture and digest and may be more important as food sources than was previously thought. (from Marine food web)
Image 23Some representative ocean animal life (not drawn to scale) within their approximate depth-defined ecological habitats. Marine microorganisms exist on the surfaces and within the tissues and organs of the diverse life inhabiting the ocean, across all ocean habitats. (from Marine habitat)
Image 25Oceanic pelagic food web showing energy flow from micronekton to top predators. Line thickness is scaled to the proportion in the diet. (from Marine food web)
Image 26Only 29 percent of the world surface is land. The rest is ocean, home to the marine habitats. The oceans are nearly four kilometres deep on average and are fringed with coastlines that run for nearly 380,000 kilometres.
Image 27The distribution of anthropogenic stressors faced by marine species threatened with extinction in various marine regions of the world. Numbers in the pie charts indicate the percentage contribution of an anthropogenic stressors' impact in a specific marine region. (from Marine food web)
Image 32In the open ocean, sunlit surface epipelagic waters get enough light for photosynthesis, but there are often not enough nutrients. As a result, large areas contain little life apart from migrating animals. (from Marine habitat)
Image 40The Ocean Cleanup is one of many organizations working toward marine conservation such at this interceptor vessel that prevents plastic from entering the ocean. (from Marine conservation)
Mycoloop links between phytoplankton and zooplankton
Chytrid‐mediated trophic links between phytoplankton and zooplankton (mycoloop). While small phytoplankton species can be grazed upon by zooplankton, large phytoplankton species constitute poorly edible or even inedible prey. Chytrid infections on large phytoplankton can induce changes in palatability, as a result of host aggregation (reduced edibility) or mechanistic fragmentation of cells or filaments (increased palatability). First, chytrid parasites extract and repack nutrients and energy from their hosts in form of readily edible zoospores. Second, infected and fragmented hosts including attached sporangia can also be ingested by grazers (i.e. concomitant predation). (from Marine fungi)
Image 49Conference events, such as the events hosted by the United Nations, help to bring together many stakeholders for awareness and action. (from Marine conservation)
Image 50This algae bloom occupies sunlit epipelagic waters off the southern coast of England. The algae are maybe feeding on nutrients from land runoff or upwellings at the edge of the continental shelf. (from Marine habitat)
Image 52Lampreys are often parasitic and have a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth (from Marine vertebrate)
Image 53Cycling of marine phytoplankton. Phytoplankton live in the photic zone of the ocean, where photosynthesis is possible. During photosynthesis, they assimilate carbon dioxide and release oxygen. If solar radiation is too high, phytoplankton may fall victim to photodegradation. For growth, phytoplankton cells depend on nutrients, which enter the ocean by rivers, continental weathering, and glacial ice meltwater on the poles. Phytoplankton release dissolved organic carbon (DOC) into the ocean. Since phytoplankton are the basis of marine food webs, they serve as prey for zooplankton, fish larvae and other heterotrophic organisms. They can also be degraded by bacteria or by viral lysis. Although some phytoplankton cells, such as dinoflagellates, are able to migrate vertically, they are still incapable of actively moving against currents, so they slowly sink and ultimately fertilize the seafloor with dead cells and detritus. (from Marine food web)
Image 55Waves and currents shape the intertidal shoreline, eroding the softer rocks and transporting and grading loose particles into shingles, sand or mud (from Marine habitat)
Image 56Anthropogenic stressors to marine species threatened with extinction (from Marine food web)
Image 59Chytrid parasites of marine diatoms. (A) Chytrid sporangia on Pleurosigma sp. The white arrow indicates the operculate discharge pore. (B) Rhizoids (white arrow) extending into diatom host. (C) Chlorophyll aggregates localized to infection sites (white arrows). (D and E) Single hosts bearing multiple zoosporangia at different stages of development. The white arrow in panel E highlights branching rhizoids. (F) Endobiotic chytrid-like sporangia within diatom frustule. Bars = 10 μm. (from Marine fungi)
Image 60Ernst Haeckel's 96th plate, showing some marine invertebrates. Marine invertebrates have a large variety of body plans, which are currently categorised into over 30 phyla. (from Marine invertebrates)
Image 61Cryptic interactions in the marine food web. Red: mixotrophy; green: ontogenetic and species differences; purple: microbial cross‐feeding; orange: auxotrophy; blue: cellular carbon partitioning. (from Marine food web)
Image 62Microplastics found in sediments on the seafloor (from Marine habitat)
Model of the energy generating mechanism in marine bacteria
(1) When sunlight strikes a rhodopsin molecule (2) it changes its configuration so a proton is expelled from the cell (3) the chemical potential causes the proton to flow back to the cell (4) thus generating energy (5) in the form of adenosine triphosphate. (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 67Reconstruction of an ammonite, a highly successful early cephalopod that first appeared in the Devonian (about 400 mya). They became extinct during the same extinction event that killed the land dinosaurs (about 66 mya). (from Marine invertebrates)
Image 68A protected sea turtle area that warns of fines and imprisonment on a beach in Miami, Florida. (from Marine conservation)
Image 69On average there are more than one million microbial cells in every drop of seawater, and their collective metabolisms not only recycle nutrients that can then be used by larger organisms but also catalyze key chemical transformations that maintain Earth's habitability. (from Marine food web)
Image 70
Estimates of microbial species counts in the three domains of life
Bacteria are the oldest and most biodiverse group, followed by Archaea and Fungi (the most recent groups). In 1998, before awareness of the extent of microbial life had gotten underway, Robert M. May estimated there were 3 million species of living organisms on the planet. But in 2016, Locey and Lennon estimated the number of microorganism species could be as high as 1 trillion. (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 71Tidepools on rocky shores make turbulent habitats for many forms of marine life (from Marine habitat)
Image 74Phylogenetic tree representing bacterial OTUs from clone libraries and next-generation sequencing. OTUs from next-generation sequencing are displayed if the OTU contained more than two sequences in the unrarefied OTU table (3626 OTUs). (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 90Dickinsonia may be the earliest animal. They appear in the fossil record 571 million to 541 million years ago. (from Marine invertebrates)
Image 91Ocean surface chlorophyll concentrations in October 2019. The concentration of chlorophyll can be used as a proxy to indicate how many phytoplankton are present. Thus on this global map green indicates where a lot of phytoplankton are present, while blue indicates where few phytoplankton are present. – NASA Earth Observatory 2019. (from Marine food web)
Image 101Ocean Conservation Namibia rescuing a seal that was entangled in discarded fishing nets. (from Marine conservation)
Image 102Cnidarians are the simplest animals with cells organised into tissues. Yet the starlet sea anemone contains the same genes as those that form the vertebrate head. (from Marine invertebrates)
Image 112Elevation-area graph showing the proportion of land area at given heights and the proportion of ocean area at given depths (from Marine habitat)
Image 113A microbial mat encrusted with iron oxide on the flank of a seamount can harbour microbial communities dominated by the iron-oxidizing Zetaproteobacteria (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 116Archaea were initially viewed as extremophiles living in harsh environments, such as the yellow archaea pictured here in a hot spring, but they have since been found in a much broader range of habitats. (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 117Food web structure in the euphotic zone. The linear food chain large phytoplankton-herbivore-predator (on the left with red arrow connections) has fewer levels than one with small phytoplankton at the base. The microbial loop refers to the flow from the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) via heterotrophic bacteria (Het. Bac.) and microzooplankton to predatory zooplankton (on the right with black solid arrows). Viruses play a major role in the mortality of phytoplankton and heterotrophic bacteria, and recycle organic carbon back to the DOC pool. Other sources of dissolved organic carbon (also dashed black arrows) includes exudation, sloppy feeding, etc. Particulate detritus pools and fluxes are not shown for simplicity. (from Marine food web)
Image 118
Bacterioplankton and the pelagic marine food web
Solar radiation can have positive (+) or negative (−) effects resulting in increases or decreases in the heterotrophic activity of bacterioplankton. (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 119Morphological diversity of fungi collected from a marine sponge species, Ircinia variabilis (from Marine fungi)
Image 120Scanning electron micrograph of a strain of Roseobacter, a widespread and important genus of marine bacteria. For scale, the membrane pore size is 0.2 μm in diameter. (from Marine prokaryotes)
Image 121The pelagic food web, showing the central involvement of marine microorganisms in how the ocean imports nutrients from and then exports them back to the atmosphere and ocean floor (from Marine food web)
Image 122The deep sea amphipodEurythenes plasticus, named after microplastics found in its body, demonstrating plastic pollution affects marine habitats even 6000m below sea level. (from Marine habitat)
Image 123Conceptual diagram of faunal community structure and food-web patterns along fluid-flux gradients within Guaymas seep and vent ecosystems. (from Marine food web)
Image 124Ocean or marine biomass, in a reversal of terrestrial biomass, can increase at higher trophic levels. (from Marine food web)
Image 9Global map of large marine ecosystems. Oceanographers and biologists have identified 66 LMEs worldwide. (from Marine ecosystem)
Image 10Ecosystem services delivered by epibenthicbivalve reefs. Reefs provide coastal protection through erosion control and shoreline stabilization, and modify the physical landscape by ecosystem engineering, thereby providing habitat for species by facilitative interactions with other habitats such as tidal flat benthic communities, seagrasses and marshes. (from Marine ecosystem)
... You have a greater chance of being struck by lightning, drowning in a bathtub, fatally falling down stairs, or dying from a bee sting than being killed by a shark.
... Marbled hatchetfish are the only known fish that can actually fly by jumping into the air and moving their fins.
... If sharks don’t keep on swimming they sink to the seabed.
... Shark brains aren’t round like a human's; they are long and narrow.
... Most sharks never close their eyes. Some have special see-through eyelids that protect their eyes without cutting out light. Others just roll their eyes up into their head to protect them.
The giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus), also known as the brindle bass and as the Queensland grouper in Australia, is the largest bony fish found in coral reefs, and the aquatic emblem of Queensland, Australia. It is found throughout the Indo-Pacific region, with the exception of the Persian Gulf. The species can grow as large as 2.7 meters (9 ft) long, weighing up to 400 kg (880 lb). They are fairly common in shallow waters and feed on a variety of marine life, including small sharks and juvenile sea turtles.
Photo taken at the Georgia Aquarium on January 23rd by Diliff with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS.
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![Image 77Pennate diatom from an Arctic meltpond, infected with two chytrid-like [zoo-]sporangium fungal pathogens (in false-colour red). Scale bar = 10 μm. (from Marine fungi)](/wiki/File:Pennate_diatom_infected_with_two_chytrid-like_fungal_pathogens.png)
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