Our Florida waters are filled with many spectacular sea creatures.  The more that is learned about them hopefully the more we all appreciate them.

  SEA HORSE

The seahorse is an unusual type of fish. Its long nose and the upright position in which it swims, makes it look much like a horse and that's how it got the name. The seahorse has a long tail that can be curled around coral or seaweed and used as an anchor. A seahorse can grow up to 10 inches in length and can be black, brown, white, yellow, or red in color. They are born from eggs laid by the mother. but the eggs are actually carried in the father's pouch until birth, when the baby seahorses swim away.  A sea horses habitat is in sea grasses and man-made structures in shallow water.

• The fins of a sea horse can move 25 to 30 times a second.
• The males hold the babies in their pouch.
• They can hold from 100 to 200 babies at a time.

When the babies come out, they have to fend for themselves.

  MORE SEAHORSE FACTS:

-Seahorses gained international protection on May 15, 2004

-What do South American Spider Monkeys, Ringtail Opossums and seahorses have in common? They all have prehensile tails.

-Seahorses are members of the Teleost suborder, or bony fish.

-Seahorses usually live in the tropics or along temperate coasts.

-The average height of a full-grown sea horse is 2-8 inches.
Seahorses also vary in color, including orange, red, yellows, grey, and greens.

-Seahorses can come in patterns like “zebra stripes” and spots.

-Seahorses change color to blend in with their surroundings.

-Seahorses feed on small living animals such as daphnia, cyclops, larvae of water insects, or mysids.

-Seahorses like to swim in pairs linked by their tales.

-Seahorses cannot curl their tails backwards.

-Seahorses belong to the vertabra group, meaning they have an interior skeleton.

-The small dorsal fins propel it through the water in an upright position, while it beats them back and forth, almost as fast as a humming bird flapping its wings.

-Seahorses usually mate under a full moon.

-The pectoral fins control turning and steering. When resting, the seahorse curls its tail around seaweed, to keep it from floating away...

-Seahorse natural predators are crabs, tuna, skates and rays.

-Seahorses are loyal and mate for life.

-During mating, the Seahorses utter musical sounds.

-The female deposits eggs into the male’s small pouch, and then leaves. Out of the entire animal kingdom, these are the only animals in which the male has babies!

-Twenty-five million seahorses a year are now being traded around the world - 64 percent more than in the mid-1990s - and environmentalists are increasingly concerned that the booming trade in seahorses is putting the creatures at risk.

STARFISH

BODY

Sea stars have a central body disc that blends into it’s  radiating arms, or rays.This spiny, five rayed creatures are one example of a very unusual group of marine animals. Also sea stars can be many colors like red, orange, pink, yellow, white blue, green, tan, brown, gray, black,and purple. The starfish’s long arms can be from 10 to 25 inches long. Most spiny-skinned animals have no eyes but amazingly starfish have a small red eye spot in the middle. They can see light and dark.

RELATIVES

The sea star has many relativeslike the sea cucumber, and irregular sea urchins, and regular sea urchins.

HABITAT

The starfish can live all over the world. If you are looking for a starfish they are usually in rocky places. Also sea stars can swim all the down to the bottom of the sea or they can relaxed and float on top. The Ochre sea star can live any where from Alaska to California. The Ochre sea star can also climb up to the top of the wall and stay there for more then 5 hours. Most  sea stars are in small groups or alone. There is a sea star called Crown-of-Thorns and they live coral reefs.

HOW IT LIVES

Starfish eat good things like mussels and sea weed. There are many ways for a starfish to move. One way is by pumping sea water through their bodies into tube feet. When the water is pumped out, the tube feet grip like suction cupsand pulls itself forward. When one of the starfish lose one of their body parts it always grows back.

DID YOU KNOW?

   Sea Stars are more delicate and lesser known brittle stars

   Sea stars and their kin have been around for five hundred million years

   In the past sea stars were more common than they are today.

OCTOPUS

DESCRIPTION

The octopus is an invertebrate, which means it has no bones.  The octopus is a cephalopod and this means a head with legs. The octopus has three hearts and they all are located in the head. Just like the hearts all organs are located in the head. The octopus has 8 flexible legs. Located beneath the legs are suction cups.The suction cupscan taste and the suction cups can help it move across rocks and through the sea. The octopuses’ legs encircle its mouth. The octopuses’ mouth is a beak. The octopus has a funnel on its head, which helps the octopus escaped from predators.  

HOW IT LIVES

Some different kinds of foods that the octopus eats are clams, its favorite, lobster, and many other shelled foods. The octopus can taste with its suction cups paralyzeits prey. When it gets back to its den if the prey has a shell the octopus will either tear the shell off or use its file-like tongue to drill through the shell. Then the octopus will eat its prey

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HABITAT

There are more than 150 types of octopus. Most of the 150 octopi live in tropical or subtropical areas. Different octopi live in different water, some live in shallow water, and others live in deep water. Also some octopi live in different places. For example, some octopi live in the Coral Reef. Also the octopus lives in its den by itself.

DEFENDING OCTOPUS

An octopus can defend itself from predators predators.  Another way an octopus can escape from predators is by spraying black ink, which has the scent of an octopus.  This will confuse the predatorto attack the ink. This will give the octopus just enough time to change to the color of white and escape.

  MORE OCTOPUS FACTS:

• The octopus is a very intelligent animal.The octopus can open a jar that has a piece of prey in it. The smarts are that the octopus figures out how to open a jar. An octopus can learn by watching another octopus. For example, scientists put two balls out and one of the balls had a snack hidden behind it. After a few tries the octopus found out which ball always had the snack behind it. Then the octopus could find the snack easily. There was a second octopus on the side that was watching the octopus. When the experiment was tried on the second octopus, it found the snack on the first try repeatedly.Sometimes known as the large sea creature of the deep some octopi are only a few centimeters across.

• The largest type of octopus is the North Pacific Octopus, which may be thirty feet and can weigh more then one hundred lbs. The smallest type of octopus is the Californian Octopus, which only reaches to 3/8” to 1”.

• The Blue Ringed Octopus has enough poison to kill humans. When the Blue Ringed Octopuses rings turn deep blue that means it may attack at any time. The Blue Ringed Octopus can be four inches long and ten centimeters across.

• Generally the smaller the octopus the more of a poisonous bite it has.  

• The octopus is most likely known as a cephalopod.

JELLYFISH