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Feb 1 2013 - 11:16am
A beroid ctenophore lunges toward prey with its mouth wide open. Beroid comb jellies don't have tentacles to catch prey: instead, they can open their mouths and snap them shut tight to trap prey inside. And one of their main prey items is other jellies—one species (Beroe cucumis) feeds exclusively...
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Jul 19 2012 - 9:14am
A huge colony of brittlestars (likely Ophiacantha rosea) covers the peak of a seamount in the deep ocean. What’s the attraction? Food! Their arms reach out for tiny food particles carried by the swift Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
Phoenix is seen skim feeding off the coast of Maine in August 2004. More about the right whale can be found in our Tale of a Whale featured story.
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
The fringed baleen plates are easy to observe as this North Atlantic right whale skims the water’s surface while it feeds. Many baleen whales suck in as much water was possible, and then push it out through their baleen to sieve out any krill. Right whales, however, skim the water's surface. More...
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Nov 2 2010 - 12:43pm
Animals, on land and in the ocean, live in a 3-D world, and they depend on their sense organs and brains to build the mental constructs that allow them to orient and navigate, which is crucial for hunting and fleeing. The process is far from simple. Humans, for example, use many visual clues to...
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
This magnified photo provides a close-up look at copepods—tiny crustaceans that right whales feed on. There are many species of copepods that live throughout the water column, from floating at the surface to buried at the bottom of the sea. They are very small so right whales need to eat a lot of...
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Sep 12 2010 - 3:38pm
"Open Wide" spread from Citizens of the Sea by Nancy Knowlton.
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Dec 31 2012 - 8:49am
A right whale opens its mouth wide, revealing huge plates of baleen hanging from its upper jaw. There are between 200 and 270 baleen plates on each side of a right whale's upper jaw. They work like a giant sieve to catch the whale's food. Strong but flexible, baleen is made of the same substance as...
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Dec 23 2010 - 2:33pm
“This humpback uses its lower jaw to strain fish off the water’s surface as sea birds snatch their own meals right out of the whale’s open mouth.” -- Nature's Best photographer, Bryce Flynn.
See more beautiful ocean photos in our slideshow of winners from the 2010 Nature's Best Ocean Views photo...
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Sep 20 2012 - 11:45am
Sperm whales have conical teeth on their long, narrow, lower jaw. The teeth fit neatly into sockets in the upper jaw, which has no teeth. This arrangement is a perfect adaptation for slurping up soft-bodied squids—giant or otherwise. The sperm whale is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN's Red List of...
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Oct 22 2012 - 9:01am
A diet of algae and seagrasses gives this turtle (Chelonia mydas) greenish colored fat—and its name. Weighing as much as 500 pounds, the threatened green sea turtle lives its life at sea, with only females coming to shore to lay eggs. See a slideshow with more pictures of beautiful but threatened...
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Aug 18 2010 - 4:44pm
Marine biologists from MBARI nicknamed this startlingly large jellyfish—which grows over one meter (three feet) in diameter—"big red." It would be hard to miss, except that it lives at depths of 650 to 1,500 meters (2,000 to 4,800 feet). Big red uses four to seven fleshy "feeding arms" instead of...
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Jan 8 2013 - 12:06pm
I have a vivid childhood memory of sitting under the Blue Whale model hanging in the Natural History Museum in London, eating an ice cream and wondering “How in the world did that whale get so big?” These days we are closer to knowing the answer. Over the past several years, a group of researchers...
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Sep 19 2012 - 10:11am
The Sargassum frogfish Histrio histrio (Antennariidae) is a small but voracious predator - it can ingest animals up to it’s own size! The fins of the frogfish are perfect for creeping around in the algae and stalking unsuspecting prey.
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May 10 2013 - 2:47pm
Laysan albatrosses (Phoebastria immutabilis) are incredible birds. They have a wingspan of more than 6 feet, soaring vast distances without flapping their wings.
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Jan 17 2013 - 12:23pm
Snow on land can make some people grumpy, but the magical-looking flakes and a beautiful layer on the trees can turn even disenchanted adults into gleeful children again. But what is the ocean equivalent of a snowy night?
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
Great White Sharks breach to hunt -- with split-second timing they grab an unsuspecting seal or sea lion in one swift snatch. Follow the action in this slideshow. Learn more about the great white shark in the Great White Shark section.
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Apr 13 2012 - 2:46pm
The Titanic's sinking around 100 years ago created a new underwater habitat for organisms: the wreck itself. One of these is a species of bacteria -- named Halomonas titanicae after the great ship -- that lives inside icicle-like growths of rust, called "rusticles." These bacteria eat iron in the...
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Dec 19 2012 - 10:23am
No two snowflakes are alike. Every snowflake is beautiful in its own way. But this one’s pretty creepy. The snowflake moray eel (Echidna nebulosa) has white, black and yellow splotches all over its body, which come together to look like snowflake designs. Moray eels eat their prey in a unique...
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Sep 12 2012 - 10:45am
This scanning electron micrograph magnifies the tiny teeth that cover the surface of the giant squid’s tongue-like organ, or radula. Seven rows of sharp teeth help direct tiny pieces of food down the squid’s esophagus (only three are shown here). Because the esophagus passes through the brain...
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Aug 29 2012 - 1:35pm
The comb jelly (ctenophore) Thalassocalyce inconstans is found in shallow to deep water in the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and sometimes in warmer Pacific Ocean waters off the coast of California -- although this one was photographed in the Sargasso Sea by Census of Marine Zooplankton...
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
This deep-sea urchin (Echinocrepis rostrata) is an important “bulldozer.” It turns over sediment and exposes prey as it moves across the ocean floor, leaving a trail of tracks behind. This photo was taken about 220 kilometers (137 miles) off the California coast and 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) below...
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
Like octopods and cuttlefishes, giant squid have eight arms. But they use their two much longer feeding tentacles to seize prey. The tentacles have powerful suckers at the ends. More about the giant squid can be found in our Giant Squid featured story.
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Jul 18 2012 - 10:45am
It's hard to imagine a 2000-pound animal launching itself out of the water while hunting, but the great white shark does just that. This spectacular behavior is called breaching, and great white sharks breach in order to catch fast-moving prey like seals.
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