Featured Creatures

The giant hydrothermal vent tubeworms aren’t called “extremophiles” (they live in extreme environments) for no reason. Colonies of these tubeworms live on hydrothermal vents spewing hot, mineral-rich water that, in some places, can reach an astounding 350 degrees Celsius (660 degrees Fahrenheit).

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.

Climate Crisis and the American LobsterThe American lobster, an icon for our seafood in the U.S., may be in trouble because of climate change. How is this coveted epicurean pleasure threatened?Warming water appear to be particularly impacting the early life stages of American lobster. Before they're even able to move to cooler waters, Larval and juvenile lobsters, even more sensitive to water temperatures, don't stand a chance as they're too young to move to cooler waters.

One of the most popular and most photographed exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium is the beautiful mesmerizing ballet of sea nettles. The Pacific sea nettle, Chrysaora fuscescens, lives in coastal waters from Alaska to California, to Japan, Kamchatka, the Aleutian Islands, and the Bering Sea. With their long, trailing tentacles these jellies are large: their bells are about 17.7 inches (45 cm) in diameter, mouth-arms from 12 to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.6 m) long. The frilly mouth-arms and tentacles are covered with stinging cells, called nematocysts.

Ranging 2”to 9’ feet, earthworms move miles and miles of earth for us. As children, many of us discovered earthworms while playing in the dirt. We either loved them or thought they were gross—but, their role on our planet is undeniably essential. Earthworms are very important recyclers—a role Charles Darwin recognized. In fact, his last published book in 1881 was about earthworm behavior and ecology.Earthworms are decomposers: they eat and break down dead plant and animal material in the soil. As they burrow, ingest dirt and poop, they turn the soil and put nutrients back into it. 

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.

Krill are shrimp-like arthropods that make up a large portion of the zooplankton in many regions of the ocean. Krill are near the base of the oceanic food web feeding on phytoplankton. In turn, enormous swarms of krill feed the largest creatures in the ocean: blue and other baleen whales, sea birds, squid, and fish.Blue whales, the largest animals that ever lived, eat up to four tons of krill a day to fuel their huge bodies. In fact, krill – about two inches long –make up the majority of their diet. Blue and humpback, and other baleen whales, are filter feeders. They take in huge gulps of seawater dense with krill straining out the water though their baleen and then swallowing their catch.

Bivalves, (clams, oysters and mussels), are often on our dinner plates. But when we take a tasty bite, we’re also eating microplastics. These shellfish are filter-feeders, straining plankton from seawater for food. Along with plankton, they’re ingesting microplastic bits.Scientists have looked in the tissues of several kinds of bivalves to discover the amount and kind of plastic found in these animals. In some places, they’ve found the majority of plastic is overwhelmingly microfibers as these are easily eaten by zooplankton.

Imagine a creature with such a radically different body plan that we, bilateral humans, can’t really fathom how they have been so successful. Sea stars, and other echinoderms, move and feed like no other animals. They are animals that followed a different evolutionary path after evolving from the same bilateral ancestors as us.