Ocean Facts for Kids
Deep-sea facts and ocean wonders
The pistol shrimp can snap its claw so fast that it creates a cavitation bubble reaching temperatures as hot as the surface of the sun for a tiny instant. The snap is louder than a gunshot and stuns or kills prey.
The whale shark is the largest fish in the ocean, growing up to 12 metres long. Despite its enormous size, it is completely harmless to humans and feeds only on tiny plankton by filter feeding.
When threatened, sea cucumbers can expel their internal organs through their body wall to confuse or entangle predators. They can then regenerate their organs over a few weeks.
The Arctic tern makes the longest migration of any animal, flying from the Arctic to Antarctica and back each year — a round trip of about 70,000 kilometres. Over its lifetime it may travel the equivalent of three trips to the Moon.
Parrotfish bite off chunks of coral with their beak-like teeth, digest the algae inside, and excrete the leftover calcium carbonate as fine white sand. A single parrotfish can produce hundreds of kilograms of sand every year.
The mimic octopus can change its shape, colour, and behaviour to impersonate other animals such as flatfish, lionfish, and sea snakes. It chooses which animal to mimic based on the predator that is threatening it.
The coelacanth was thought to have been extinct for 66 million years until a living specimen was caught off South Africa in 1938. It is considered a living fossil and gives scientists clues about how fish first moved onto land.
The Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water on Earth, covering more area than all the continents combined. It stretches from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south.
Tsunamis can travel across the open ocean at speeds of up to 900 kilometres per hour — as fast as a jet aeroplane. In the open ocean they may only be a few centimetres tall, but near the shore they can grow to enormous heights.
A constant shower of dead organic matter called 'marine snow' drifts down from the surface to the ocean floor. This provides food for creatures living in the dark depths that have no access to sunlight.