Although we see sponges every day in various uses such as in the form of a loofah or foam, it does not come across to us as what it really is. Sponges are actually an animal, which belongs to the phylum Porifera. Their bodies consist of a jelly-like material called mesohyl which are sandwiched between
The hawksbill turtle is a critically endangered sea turtle that can be found all over the world. It even has several subspecies belonging to the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This turtle's head looks a bit like a hawks As it is a turtle, it looks just like any other marine turtle. It has a
The loggerhead sea turtle, simply known as ‘loggerhead’, is a type of oceanic turtle that can be found around the world. This marine reptile belongs to the family Cheloniidae. It is the largest hard-shelled turtle in the world. The loggerhead turtle is the largest hard shelled turtle in the world The loggerhead sea turtle grows
The sei whale is the 3rd largest baleen whale after the fin whale and the blue whale. It inhabits most of the world’s oceans and its adjoining seas, but prefers to stay in deep, offshore waters. It will avoid tropical, polar, and semi-enclosed bodies of water. They migrate annually from the cool and subpolar waters
The Pallid sturgeon is a species of ray-finned fish which is endemic to the waters of the Missouri and the lower Mississippi River basins in the USA. It is an endangered species, which is named after its pale color. It is closely related to its more common cousin, the shovelnose sturgeon. The differences between these
The oceanic whitetip shark is a large pelagic shark that lives in tropical and warm temperate seas. This shark goes by many common names in English, such as brown shark, whitetip shark, nigano shark, whitetip whaler, and Brown Milbert’s sand bar shark. It was first described by the Naturalist, René-Primevère Lesson in Louis Dupprey’s world
The Australian Sea Lion is the only sea lion species that breeds only in the west and southern coasts of Australia. It is an endangered species, with only 10,000 individuals left after the introduction of the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Act of 1972. This Act prohibited harvesting the sea lions which began as soon
Also known as the Japanese Common Squid, the Japanese Flying Squid is part of the Ommastrephidae family. It lives in the northern Pacific Ocean around Japan, and up to the coast of China, Russia, and across the Bering Straight towards lower Alaska and Canada. Clusters of the Japanese Flying Squid are also found in the
Also known as the Jumbo Squid, Jumbo Flying Squid, or the Diablo Rojo (Red Devil in Spanish), the Humboldt Squid is a large squid that is found in the Humboldt Current, in the east Pacific Ocean. They are found at depths of 660 – 2,300 feet, from California to Tierra del Fuego. However, it has
Squid are famous marine cephalods, and there are 300 species in this order. They have a distinctive head, arms, mantle, and bilateral symmetry. They are famous for having 8 tentacles and being strong swimmers. A bonaire reef squid Their main body mass is enclosed in a mantle, and it has a swimming fin on each
Also known as the offshore hake, the haddock is a marine fish found in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is a very popular fish which is caught for commercial purposes. The haddock can be easily recognised by its black lateral line that runs on its white side. It also has a distinctive dark mark above
Forming the Gobiidae family, gobies are one of the largest fish families with more than 2,000 species in 200 genera. Despite its massive family size, they are actually rather small in size as most are less than 10 cm long. Some goby members also are the smallest vertebrates in the world, such as the Pandaka
One of the most popular aquarium fish in the world is the yellow tang. It is a type of saltwater fish species that comes from the surgeonfish family. They are commonly found in shallow coral reefs, between 2 to 46 metres deep in the Indian Oceans and Pacific Oceans, ranging from eastern Japan to western
Belonging to the Isididae family is the bamboo coral, which is a well recognised deep sea organism. This is because of the clearly articulated skeleton of this species, and many deep water coral species have been affected by bottom trawling. As a result, these bamboo corals are important in the study of climate change in
Also known as the stony coral, Brain corals are a type of coral that are known for looking like a brain. In other words, they are spheroid in shape, and have a grooved surface which resembles the brain of an animal. They are found in shallow warm-water coral reefs all over the world. They are
