The Boy in the Submarine

Puffer fish are actually a whole family of fish with somewhere between 120 and 200 species. They are famous for their ability to blow themselves up like a balloon to scare off predators, but that’s not their only defence! Puffer fish are very poisonous and anything that eats them is in serious trouble. Many of them have spines on their body as well. They need all the defences they can get, because they are slow and clumsy swimmers. Puffer fish scrape algae from rocks, or use the “beak” made up of their fused-together front teeth to crack open the shells of snails, crabs, and shellfish. They can be found anywhere the water is warm, and live both in salt and fresh water.

Bowhead whales are baleen whales who live in the icy Arctic Ocean. Their bow-shaped heads have a hard plate on the top that lets them smash through the ice when they want to come up for air. They are incredibly long lived, with lifespans of around 300-400 years. They are also amazing singers with an incredible range of haunting vocalizations. They are an important filter feed that controls the population of krill and plankton in the Arctic.

The remora is a fish that sticks to the underbelly of bigger creatures. They eat the food that the creature they are riding misses, and helps keep them clean: a perfect picture of symbiosis!

Sea otters are the biggest member of the mustelid family, which includes skunks, weasels, ferrets, stoats, badgers, and minks… but they are also the smallest marine mammal. Sea otters dive underwater for up to 8 minutes at a time to catch crabs, shellfish, and urchins. They are clever tool-users who bang their prey with rocks to crack open their shells for meat. They also wrap their babies in kelp to keep them from floating away while they dive! Sea otters are very important for the environment, which is why we call they a keystone species. All along the North Pacific coast of North America, where there are sea otters, sea grasses are more healthy. They also eat up to 1/4 their body weight in sea urchins a day, which is important, because sea urchins can devastate a kelp forest if they become too numerous. Sea otters are endangered, mostly because we used to hunt them for their fur. Laws were passed to protect them as early as 1911, but one of the most important things we have done to protect them is to just stop considering fur clothing fashionable!

Blue Whales are the largest animal that has ever lived! They get to 30.5 meters, and can be as heavy as 181,000kg (400 tons). They have tongues the size of an elephant, hearts as big as a car, and blood vessels a kid could crawl in. For such a big creature their food is very small: they eat krill, plankton, and shrimp: as much as 3,600kg (8000lbs) every day by sucking them into their huge mouths, then spitting the water back out so that their food gets caught on the back of the baleen they have instead of teeth. They then lick their food off the back of their teeth. Not are they the biggest creature in the world, they are the second loudest, too. Only the Sperm Whale gets louder. Blue Whales swim up and down every Ocean except the Arctic following the plankton and krill that they eat through the seasons, They dive to catch their food, and can hold their breath for 90 minutes, while diving as deep as 500m. (1600 feet) although they prefer to dive 100m deep or less.

Last year I had to cut season 2 off early because my dad (and producer) got very sick. But he’s better now, and I’m back, with new facts about amazing life under the sea!

Bigfin Reef Squid image CC-BY-SA “Rhododendrites“ Bigfin Reef Squid is the name of a tiny squid close to Owen’s heart… or so we thought! These sneaky, sparkling squid turned out to be a cryptospecies complex: several different kind of squid that all look so much alike that scientists couldn’t tell them apart until they studied their DNA. That’s okay – owen loves them all. Bigfin reef squid are one of the only kind(s) of squid that can hear, and they are one of the most social, they know and stick close to their families. They sparkle because of special cells in their body called scinitillophores. Some important fish we eat like swordfish and tuna live on these little guys, and we eat lots of them, too. They are very important to us!

Jellies might look like blobs, but they are very complicated invertebrates that come in hundreds of shapes and can be microscopic or as big as a whale! They can fill almost any ecological niche from prey, to keystone species, to predator! Jellies’ chemistry is a little different from other creatures, and can be mysterious. Some jellyfish seem immune to aging! While most people think of common jellyfish like the sea nettle, there are many strange and beautiful species, like the comb jelly, which looks kind of like a crystal space ship strung with twinkling Christmas Lights!

Crown of Thorns Starfish Image CC-BY Joi Ito The Crown of Thorns Starfish is an very unusual species of Sea-Star. It has a round-flat body with a much bigger central body and stomach than most sea stars, and is symmetrical with an even number of arms, while most sea stars have odd numbers. It is called a “crown of thorns” starfish because of the rings of sharp spikes growing on the top of its body. The Crown of Thorns Starfish is toxic. Eating it or getting pricked by it can cause pain like a bee sting and cause a stomach upset that can last over a week. Only a few types of sea creatures have the body chemistry to be able to eat them. The Crown of Thorns Starfish likes spots where the air in the water is a bit thinner like crevices and nooks. Where water has become polluted, they seem to be thriving these days. They like eating invertebrates that make calcium crusts around itself like sea anemones and especially coral. They are a big contributor right now to the disappearance of our world’s coral reef.

Oysters, clams, and mussels are a type of mollusc called a bivalve. Bivalves grow two shells, one on the right side of their body and one on the left. They hold them closed except when they need to open them with a powerful muscle. Oysters grow together, sometimes little ones make a home on a shell of a bigger oyster and grow right off of them. This can lead to hills of oysters called reefs, or big stretches of sea floor covered in oysters called beds. Bivalves sometimes get grit and sand stuck in them, which hurts. When they can’t get rid of it they secrete a thick mucus we call mother of pearl which hardens into a shiny resin, they coat the grit until it is a smooth ball with no hard edges to hurt them. This is where pearls come from. A few kinds of pearl are called “pearl oysters” because they make big, perfectly round, beautiful pearls. We grow them and put and in them on purpose to get big beautiful pearls. Bivalves like the pearl oyster are living water filters: they suck in water, and clean it by taking out pollutants and bacteria, they spit it out much cleaner. That makes them a very important part of the environment.