Featured Creatures

Because of the walrus’s dependence on ice, the greatest threat to walruses is the loss of ice due to climate change. 2023 was the sixth-warmest year in the Arctic since reliable records began in 1900, and the 2023 summer was the region’s warmest on record.

Seabirds are typically top predators in ocean ecosystems and often indicators of ocean health

We’re in awe of the charismatic marine megafauna Mobula. These are the manta and devil rays — two manta species and seven devil ray species

These huge seals are superb hunters and athletes in the sea — on land, not so much. Elephant seals come ashore to breed and give birth in the winter and to molt, shedding their fur and top layer of skin. When not doing this, they’re out to sea traveling in search of food. This video from KQED’s Quest gives a good overview of their natural history. Elephant seals spend 80 percent of their lives in the open sea, from Mexico to Alaska, in search of food. 90 percent of that time is spent underwater: eating, digesting, resting briefly, and traveling. When they forage during their migrations, they don’t sleep. They cat nap.

Parrotfish eat the algae on coral reefs, keeping them clean and clear, allowing sunlight to reach the algae living within the corals.

It’s a Long Way HomeEach year gray whales make a long migration along the west coast of North America from the cold waters of the Arctic to the warm waters of the Baja lagoons and back, about 10,000 miles. They travel up to five miles per hour during the southbound migration. That’s the longest migration of any mammal. Why this long journey? The whales spend their summers feeding on rich food on the bottom in the Arctic and then travel to Baja to mate and give birth in several lagoons. 

You may remember seeing an anglerfish in the movie Finding Nemo. It definitely made an impression on us.Learn more about how the freaky Anglerfish lures is prey.

The climate crisis is impacting so many beloved and iconic animals including penguins. Everything we read sounds dire for many penguin species. A new scientific study “found that if climate change continues at its current rate, emperor penguins could virtually disappear by the year 2100 due to loss of Antarctic sea ice.

Boris is a famous missing link in the evolution of chordates: he’s an early tetrapod (tetrapod means “four-legged”) fossil. Paleontologist Jenny Clack was so excited when she uncovered him that she named him Boris. Boris is a missing link because he represents an animal who may have been the first of its kind to make the transition from life in the sea to life on the land. This invasion of the land by vertebrates was a key moment in evolutionary history, leading to colonization of the land by four-limbed animals. 

Although it looks like a jellyfish, the gelatinous creature in this photo is a relative of ours: it’s a Chordate called a salp. Salps are pelagic sea squirts – tunicates. What makes these invertebrates Chordates? In our video on Chordates we show how we’re related to these ancient Chordates. Salps are transparent, barrel-shaped animals that contract their bodies to move by jet propulsion. They feed by straining water through their internal feeding filters, trapping phytoplankton. They may not be familiar animals, but salps live in equatorial, temperate and cold seas; they are most abundant in the Southern Ocean.