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In the Oceans, one can find many extremes of nature

Boxer Crabs (Lybia spec.)

Great Hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran)

      

Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae)

Isopoda (Cymothoa exigua)

Box Jelly (Chironex fleckeri)

Orca (Orcinus orca)

Pompeji worm (Alvinella pompejana)

Mantis Shrimps (Stomatopodes)

Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus)

Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus)

Amphipode Shrimp (Hirondellea gigas)

Sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus)

Schindleria brevipinguis

Feather duster worm (Lamellibranchia luymesi)

Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae)

Wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans)

Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus)

Portuguese Man'o'war (Physalia spec.)

Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris)

Narwhal (Monodon monoceros)

Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni)

Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri)​

Giant deep sea anglerfish (Ceratias holboelli)

​Clownfish (Mphiprion percula)

Cone Snail (Conus marmoreus)

Harp Seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus)

Horseshoe Crabs (Xiphosura)

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)

Mudskipper (Periophthalmus barbarous)

Blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus)

Boxer crabs are tiny. In order to defend themselves against predators, they take pieces of toxic anemones into their hands and start "boxing".

The Great Hammerhead is known to have the most elaborated electromagnetic senses of all sharks. It can detect impulses of 1/500'000'000 Volts.

It "sings" the longest and most complex songs. Every song has multiple phases which the whale repeats and a song can last up to half an hour.

The isopods are crustaceans that parasite picarels (perch-like fish) and eat their tongue. Then they hook themselves into the mouth of the picarel and replace the tongue, imitating its functions. By doing so it can feed on the remains of the picarel's diet.

The sting of the box jelly is the most painful in the ocean. It's tentacles are about 4.5 long and in total the jelly has around 120 million stinging cells. The contact with a box jelly can be lethal for humans.

One of the most feared predators. It hunts in packs and they are specialized in hunting large prey. They can even hunt and kill Great White sharks. A group of orcas can also hunt the young of blue whales.

This worm is one of the animals that can survive on black smokers - deep sea hydrothermal vents. It thrives in boiling water. Inside its body is has symbiotic chemotrophic bacteria that transform the  phosphorus acid into nutritients for the worm.

A human being can differentiate about 10'000 different color contrasts. The mantis shrimp can see  multiple times more colors, including the UV spectrum.

The spermwhale can dive longer and deeper than any other mammal. The deepest down a sperm whale has been seen, is over 3000 m and it has been holding its breath for almost two hours.

The Gray Whale is known to swim the longest distances. They tend to swim up to 16'000 km per year.

This kind of shrimp lives very deep down, at the bottom of the ocean. To be exact, it lives in the Mariana Trench, 11 km down. There are pressures a 1000 times higher than on land.

​The sailfish is the fastes swimmer in the ocean. It can develop speeds of up to 109 km/h. This is almost as fast as a cheetah (has been seen running 103-120 km/h)

This fish that only has a latin name is the smallest fish on the planet. It lives in the Great Barrier reef and is only 6.5 mm long.

This is also a creature that lives near the black smokers, those deep sea vents. Its specialty is to live long. The oldest individual that is still alive is at least 250 years old.

This fish that has been living on this planet for over 400 years has been thought to be extict, when in 1938 a living  individual was found. The coelacanth lay the biggest eggs of all fishes. They are as big as a grapefruit.

The Wandering Albatross (or snowy albatross) has the largest wingspan of up to 3.4 m. This allows this sea bird to fly rather fast. On short distances, it can speed up to 80 km/h.

The Blue Whale is the largest animal that has ever lived on this planet. The biggest ever recorded individual was 33 m long and weighed over 190 metric tons.

These jelly have the longest "weapon" in the animal kingdom. Their stinging tentacles can be up up 35 m long. Humans don't die, but the contact with this jelly evokes agonizing pain.

Sea Otters are the furiest animals. Living in a rather cold environment, they have no blubber and must rely on their hair to protect them from the cold. They have up to 394'000 single hairs per cm square (a human has about 150). When it gets even colder they blow air between their hair to incease the insulation.

The Narwhal has the longest tooth. It looks like a unicorn; its twisted tooth is up to 3 m long.

The Colossal Squid can grow up to 15 m and lives in the dark deep northern Atlantic. Its eyes are up to 60 cm in diameter.

The Emperor Penguin lives in the Antarcic and lays the egg in the deepest winter when temperature are -40°C (wind chill factor not included). Not astoundingly it is the animal with the longest incubation period of 62-67 days.

The deep sea anglerfish has the most extreme sexual parasitism. The female is 77 cm long and the male 7.3 cm. In the vast deep sea it is hard to find a mate and so as soon as the male has found a female it bites her and hooks on the her, never letting go. Their circulatory systems become one and her blood flows through him, supplying him with nutrients. All he has to do is fertilize her over and over again.

​The Clowfish is probably the most famous for his living in the anemonas that are toxic to most other animals. But, there are some more things about the Clowfish that are just extraordinary. In one anemona, only 6 Clownfishes live together, only two of which have offspring. The first in the hierarchy is the female, then her mate. The other four fishes are male bachelors. Clownfish can control their growth and so the female is the biggest and every  step down in the hierarchy, the fish only grow to 80% of the superior's bodysize. If one of the fish dies, the next one takes his place and hence grows to the size of his predecessor. But what happens if the female dies? Not a problem. The fish not only can control their growth, but also their sex and so the leading male turns into a female. 

The cone snail is known for its beauty. But it has one of the strongest toxins in the animal kingdom and certainly the fastest effecting one. A man that was stung by two cone snails was dead in less than 4 seconds.

The mother's milk of the harp seals is probably one of the fattiest. It contains 48% pure fat and is needed so the pup can gain over 2.2 kg a day, in order to be able to survive the arctic cold.

Horseshoe crabs are Arthropods (they are more closely related to spiders and scorpioons that to crustaceans). They live in shallow waters and are considered living fossils because they have been around for 450 million years and are related to the extict familiy of Trilobites. Their exoskeleton is made up mostly of chitin and they have long been used to make fertilizer for agriculture. In most coastal states of the US harvesting in now prohibited. The Crabs' blood does not contain hemoglobin to transport oxygen, but hemocyanin which contains copper. This is why horseshoe crabs have blue blood.

The Ocean Sunfish is the heaviest known bony fish in the Earth's oceans. It can weigh up to 1 metric ton (=1000 kg).

The Mudskipper is an amphibious fish, which means that it is well adapted to a life in intertidal habitats. When the tide leaves, they hide under algae or in moist mud. They can use their pectoral fins to walk on land. Once staying moist all the time, the mudskipper can spend days out of the water.

The blobfish is probably the softest fish extisting. It is adapted to live in water 0.8 kilometres deep, where a normal gas-filled swim bladder is almost useless. While other creatures at this depth "walk" over the ground, the blobfish has traded almost all its muscle mass for a jelly that is just slightly less dense than water. This allows it to coast just above the ocean floor. It doesn’t chase its prey, but simply swallows anything that’s slow or careless enough to get in the way of its mouth. Unusually for a fish, the female ‘sits’ on her eggs, instead of just abandoning them after laying.

Some of these species have extreme abilities, some can move in a special way, some grow extraordinarily, some have extreme families and so on. But, they all have one thing in common: they all are extreme in a certain way...

Sources of Pictures:

Boxer Crab: http://www.seaphotos.com/cgi-bin/show_image.pl?img=boxer_crab.jpg&   caption=The+boxer+crab+uses+a+pair+of+stinging+anemones%2C+one+grasped+in+each+claw%2C+to+defend+itself.+%28%3Ci%3ELybia+tessellata%3C%2Fi%3E;

Great Hammerhead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sphyrna_mokarran_at_georgia.jpg;

Humpback Whale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Humpback_Whale_underwater_shot.jpg;

Isopode: http://news.discovery.com/animals/tongue-eating-parasite-makes-news-again.html;

Box Jelly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Avispa_marina.jpg;

Orca: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Killerwhales_jumping.jpg;

Pompeii Worm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alvinella_pompejana01.jpg;

Mantis Shrimp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mantis_shrimp_from_front.jpg;

Sperm Whale: http://purpleopurple.com/life-science/mammals/sperm-whale.html;

Gray Whale: http://savethesea.org/STS%20gray_whales.htm;

Hirondella: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gammarus_roeselii.jpg;

Sailfish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Istiophorus_platypterus_.jpg;

Schindleria: http://animal.memozee.com/view.php?tid=3&did=25870&lang=kr;

Tube Worm: http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/census-of-marine-life-volkszaehlung-unter-wasser-fotostrecke-52809-15.html;

Coelacanth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Latimeria_Chalumnae_-_Coelacanth_-_NHMW.jpg;

Wandering Albatross: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diomedea_exulans_-_SE_Tasmania.jpg;

Blue Whale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bluewhale877.jpg;

Portuguese Man'o'War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portuguese_Man-O-War_%28Physalia_physalis%29.jpg;

Sea Otter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_otter_cropped.jpg;

Narwhal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Narwhals_breach.jpg;

Colossal Squid: http://seapics.com/assets/pictures/094038-200-giant-colossal-squid.jpg;

Emperor Penguin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aptenodytes_forsteri_-Snow_Hill_Island,_Antarctica_-adults_and_juvenile-8.jpg;

Deep Sea Anglerfish: http://www.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/CooperES/Teacher_Websites/Watson_Web/fifth_thursday_marine_biology/Jimmy.html;

Clownfish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anemone_purple_anemonefish.jpg;

Cone Snail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Conus_marmoreus_feeding_on_cowrie.jpg;

Harp Seal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blanchon-idlm2006.jpg;

Horseshoe Crab: http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/File:Horseshoe-Crab.jpg.

Sunfish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunfish2.jpg.

Mudskipper: Periophthalmus barbarous

Blobfish; http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/what-is-the-blobfish/

Copyright December 2014; Olivia Lucie Meier, Sharkworld.

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