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!

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.

People long thought that the Portuguese Man O’War was long thought to be a strange jellyfish that evolved to float on the surface. It wasn’t until we saw other Siphonophores deep underwater that we figured out it was a type of Siphohophore, too!

The Portuguese Man O’War, sometimes called the Man O’War, Box Jellyfish, or Bluebottle Jellyfish is in fact a siphonophore made up of seven different kinds of creatures: the big bubble with the sail on the back that lets it float on the surface and catch wind with its sail is a creature called a pneumatophore. It’s tentacles are creatures called Tentacular Zooids, that work just like jellyfish tentacles: they sting and paralyze prey, then bring it up to two other kinds of creatures that work together to eat and digest prey, then feed it to the others. Another creature helps push the Man ‘O’War through the water. The seventh one is a mystery: we don’t know what it’s job is yet.

The Man O’War is famous for its deadly sting. In reality, most people get a welt that hurts for 3 hours or so, but if its venom goes to the wrong place in your body it can kill you.

Portuguese The Man O’War paralyzes and eats small fish as it sails the warm seas in most of the oceans. It can be found almost anywhere where the water is warm. They are eaten by few other creatures, but are a favourite food for some kinds of sea slugs and nudibranches.

Kelp grows in huge forests, which cover 0.1% of the ocean floor. That might not sound like a lot, but some Kelp forests are so huge you can see them from space! Each kelp stalk is rooted on the ocean floor, but thanks to the air it traps in its stalk, it floats up, looking like a kind of underwater tree. Some stalks can get as tall as 175 feet (54m) tall.

Kelp forests are the home to thousands of species that use it as food, a place to hide, and as a nest. It is one of the most important life forms in for getting the sun’s energy into the water. And it also fixes almost 3% of the ocean’s carbon… making it one of the world’s big heavy lifters for protecting us from climate change and the greenhouse effect.

People use kelp as a source of food and dry it and burn it to heat homes. Some kelp can be used as a gelatin substitute, and so we used to use it as an ingredient in ice cream! You can often find dried kelp chips to eat at the health food and organic section of your supermarket.

Cuttlefish are clever tricksters of the ocean. Like their cephalopod cousins the squid and octopus, they can squirt ink, but the tricky cuttlefish can also make a balloon out of mucus and fill it with ink to make a decoy cuttlefish. They can also change their shape and colour to make themselves appear to be rocks, plants, bits of coral, or other objects found nearby. They are very smart and use these abilities with creativity and to help them explore their environment because they are both shy and very curious at the same time.

Cuttlefish are loners: they only spend time together when mating. Otherwise, they spend their time alone hunting small fish, shrimp, worms, and crabs. Some cuttlefish will eat other kinds of cuttlefish, too. There are 120 types of cuttlefish that we know of!

Siphonophores are big colonies of individual creatures (nectophores) that stick together and share the work of living I the deep sea. Some nectophores swim, some catch food, some digest it, and some do the steering. They are the perfect example of teamwork!

There are over 175 kinds of Siphonophores known to humans. The most famous is the Portuguese Man-O’-War, and the most recently discovered kind is called the Spaghetti Monster.

The Coconut Octopus is the cleverest species of cephalopod. They collect coconut shells, clam shells, or other objects they can squeeze into and hold closed. They use these tools to hide from predators and to sneak up on prey. They even carry handy hiding places around by using their arms to walk along the floor.

We have seen Coconut Octopi watch other creatures to figure out how alert they are. When they know prey isn’t paying attention, they shoot out of their hiding place, bite with their beak, and inject a powerful poison. They also change color to blend into their environment and show their feelings.

The mimic octopus is sneaky! It can change its colour and shape to imitate other sea creatures. They have been seen pretending to be crabs, sea snakes, rays, jawfish, lionfish, anemones, coral, and more! They use this amazing power to sneak up on their favourite food, damselfish! They also have been seen foraging for food from whatever is sitting around the warm shallow water and reefs of the Indian Ocean and Pacific.

Mimic Octopi are so sneaky that while people have been swimming in waters where they can be found for centuries, we only discovered them in 1998, and only observed their amazing mimicry powers years later!

You can find mimic octopi everywhere from Indonesia to the Great Barrier Reef, and around Thailand, the Philippines, and even Oman!