Ocean Facts for Kids
Deep-sea facts and ocean wonders
Moray eels have a second set of jaws hidden inside their throat called pharyngeal jaws, which shoot forward to grip prey and pull it down the eel's throat. This was made famous in the film Alien.
Antarctic krill are tiny shrimp-like creatures, each barely 6 centimetres long, but they form enormous swarms that can be seen from space and are a critical food source for whales, seals, penguins, and seabirds.
The ocean has absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped on Earth by rising greenhouse gases since the 1970s. This warming is causing sea levels to rise and coral bleaching events to become more frequent and severe.
Hammerhead sharks have eyes positioned on the ends of their wide, flat heads, giving them nearly 360-degree vision. The wide head also spreads out their electrical sensors, helping them detect prey buried beneath the sand.
The sailfish is widely considered the fastest fish in the ocean, capable of reaching speeds of around 110 kilometres per hour. It uses its tall dorsal fin like a sail to herd shoals of fish before striking at them.
Brown pelicans dive from heights of up to 20 metres into the ocean to catch fish, hitting the water at around 70 kilometres per hour. Air sacs beneath their skin cushion the impact and help them float back to the surface.
The ocean is full of sound produced by marine animals — a vast underwater symphony that scientists call biological noise. Shrimp snapping their claws collectively create one of the loudest sounds in the ocean.
Limpets cling to coastal rocks with a force proportional to their size that would be equivalent to a human holding up a large lorry. Scientists have found that limpet teeth are made from the strongest biological material ever recorded.
The Portuguese man o' war looks like a jellyfish but is actually a colony of thousands of tiny organisms called zooids, each specialised to perform a different function such as floating, stinging, or digesting food.
When you watch a wave move across the ocean, it is not actually water travelling across the sea — it is energy passing through the water. The water molecules mostly move in circular paths and end up roughly where they started.