Ocean Facts for Kids
Deep-sea facts and ocean wonders
The colossal squid has tentacles lined with sharp, rotating hooks that it uses to grab prey in the deep, dark waters of the Southern Ocean.
If you send a styrofoam cup down to the deep ocean floor, the immense pressure will crush it to the size of a thimble.
If a starfish loses an arm, it can grow a brand new one!
The ocean's twilight zone, between 200 and 1,000 metres deep, contains more fish by weight than all other ocean depths combined, yet it remains largely unexplored.
Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart in the water.
The ocean has a global conveyor belt of currents driven by differences in temperature and salinity, called thermohaline circulation, that takes about 1,000 years to complete a full loop.
A seahorse can move its eyes independently, so one eye can look forwards while the other looks backwards.
Brine pools on the ocean floor are so salty and toxic that most creatures that swim into them go into shock, yet some specially adapted organisms thrive at their edges.
Dolphins can blow perfect bubble rings from their blowholes and then play with them like toys.
Microscopic phytoplankton in the ocean are responsible for producing roughly half of all the oxygen we breathe, making them just as important as rainforests.