Archive for the MARINELIFE Category

"Molgula manhattensis” The Sea Squirt is an immobile filter feeder that live on the ocean floor. Despite their plant-like appearance, Sea Squirts are actually more closely related to vertebrates than they are to invertebrates such as sponges & coral. There are more than 3,000 known Sea Squirt species foundRead more →

"Colossendeis megalonyx” The Giant Sea Spider in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, are equipped with 8 long legs and a proboscis to match and they grow bigger in these regions than anywhere else in the world. These Giant Sea Spiders are actually pycnogonids, a type of primitiveRead more →

 "Arctica islandica” In the autumn of 2006, a team of researchers went on an expedition to Iceland where they discovered something that made the headlines across the world and even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. One of the bivalve mollusks known as the OceanRead more →

“Lontra felina” The Marine Otter is not to be confused with the far more familiar Pacific Sea Otter. The Marine Otter is smaller, leaner & more cat-like and are known locally as the “Sea Cat”. Not many Marine Otters live in captivity. They have much smaller naturalRead more →

"Lysmata amboinensis” There are many species of scavenger fish that mainly help in keeping other fish clean. Cleaner Shrimp belong to the species of omnivorous shrimp which eat both plants and animals, mainly zooplankton that usually feed on parasites and dead tissue. This species of shrimp livesRead more →

"Gavialis gangeticus” The Gharial has a characteristic elongated, narrow snout. Variation in snout shape occurs with age. It generally becomes proportionally shorter & thicker with age. The bulbous growth on the tip of the male's snout is called a "Ghara" (after the Indian word meaning "mud pot")Read more →

"Porpita porpita” Although it has 'jelly' in its name, the Blue Button Jelly is not a Sea Jelly. It is a hydroid - an animal in the class Hydrozoa, which are colonial animals. The Blue Button Jelly is made up of individual zooids, each specialized for aRead more →

"Dendraster excentricus” The familiar exoskeleton of a dead Sand Dollar found cast up on a beach, is white with an obvious 5-pointed shape on the back but a live Sand Dollar has a completely different look. Densely packed, tiny, dark purple spines cover live Sand Dollars and hide theRead more →

"Nototodarus gouldi” The  Arrow Squid can grow up to about 7 feet and can weigh as much as 100 pounds. They have 8 arms and a torpedo shaped mantle. The suction cups are on the back of the tentacles. They are used for catching prey. The headRead more →

"Sepioteuthis sepioidea” Caribbean Reef Squids are 10-arm cephalopods with torpedo-shaped bodies with the hood-like part above their heads called the mantle which contains their stomach, gills, ink sac, pen, reproductive organs and digestive organs, 2 large complex eyes, 8 short arms near their mouths and 2 longer tentacles, tuckedRead more →