MARINE LIFE/FISHES
- The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red and ultra-violet light.
- The Mola Mola, or Ocean Sunfish, lays up to 5,000,000 eggs at one time.
- You should not eat a crawfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was cooked.
- The only commercial fishing vessels in the United States still powered by sail are the Maryland "skipjacks," sailboats that dredge for oysters. A state law requires sailpower a certain distance from shore.
- Dolphins are the only other animals besides humans that get pleasure out of sex. They are also the only other animals that have sex for reasons other than reproduction.
- A marine iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.
- Ninety-nine percent of all lobsters die a few weeks after hatching. In fact, the odds are 10,000 to 1 against any larval lobster living long enough to end up as a lobster dinner.
- A dolphin's hearing is so acute that it can pick up an underwater sound from fifteen miles away.
- A group of whales is called a pod.
- The embryos of tiger sharks fight each other while in their mother's womb, the survivor being the baby shark that is born.
- The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world - fifteen inches in diameter - the size of a basketball.
- A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a spat.
- A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
- Starfish don't have brains.
- Shrimps' hearts are in their heads.
- Shrimp can only swim backwards.
- The only way to stop the pain of the sting of the flathead fish is by rubbing the slime of the belly of the same fish that you were stung by on the wound that it inflicted upon you.
- Scientists found a whole new phylum of animal on a lobster's lip.
- A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
- Only one in one thousand animals born in the sea survives to maturity.
- Female orcas live twice as long as male orcas. The larger numbers of female orcas in a pod are because of the female's longer lifespan, not because the males have collected a harem.
- Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
- Octopi have gardens.
- A type of jellyfish found off the coast of England is the longest animal in the world.
- The sea wasp is half an inch long at best and more poisonous than any other jellyfish known to man.
- Dolphins do not breathe automatically, as humans do.
- It takes the deep-sea clam 100 years to grow to a length of one-third inch.
- Dolphins have killed sharks by ramming them with their snout.
- A baby blue whale is 25 feet long at birth.
- It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
- A baby gray whale drinks enough milk to fill more than 2,000 bottles a day.
- Catfish have 100,000 taste buds.
- An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
- A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks.
- A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.
- A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim's skin, fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood, and will not feed again for months. Leeches were once used by doctors to drain "bad blood" from sick patients.
- All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some point in their lives.
- Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of the water. They frequently rise to the surface for air.
- Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream.
- It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
- Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.
- Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that they can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.
- The blue whale is the loudest animal on Earth. The call of the blue whale reaches levels up to 188 decibels. This extraordinarily loud whistle can be heard for hundreds of miles underwater.
- The giant squid is the largest creature without a backbone. It weighs up to 2.5 tons and grows up to 55 feet long. Each eye is a foot or more in diameter.
- The harmless Whale Shark, holds the title of largest fish, with the record being a 59 footer captured in Thailand in 1919.
- The largest animal ever seen alive was a 113.5 foot, 170-ton female blue whale.
- The largest Great White Shark ever caught measured 37 feet and weighed 24,000 pounds. It was found in a herring weir in New Brunswick in 1930.
- The Pacific Giant Octopus, the largest octopus in the world, grows from the size of pea to a 150 pound behemoth potentially 30 feet across in only two years, its entire life-span.
- The turbot fish lays approximately 14 million eggs during its lifetime.
- The viscera of Japanese abalone can harbor a poisonous substance which causes a burning, stinging, prickling and itching over the entire body. It does not manifest itself until exposure to sunlight - if eaten outdoors in sunlight, symptoms occur quickly and suddenly.
- The world's largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.
- Unlike most fish, electric eels cannot get enough oxygen from water. Approximately every five minutes, they must surface to breathe, or they will drown. Unlike most fish, they can swim both backwards and forwards.
- One way to tell seals and sea lions apart is that, sea lions have external ears and testicles.
- A barnacle has the largest penis of any other animal in the world in relation to its size. The difference between male and female blue crabs is the design located on their apron (belly.) The male blue crab has the Washington Monument while the female apron is shaped like the U.S. Capitol.
- A baby dolphin can swim and keep up with adults an hour after it’s born.
- The pupil of an octupus' eye is rectangular.
- In Sweden it’s against the law to train a seal to balance a ball on its nose.
- The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world's largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida owns a mere 2 million shells and claims to be the worlds only museum devoted solely to mollusks.












