1. I am actually a REAL fish! It may be hard to believe, but there are fish as sparkly as me in the ocean! I am a Damselfish. When we are young, people often call us Jewelfish, because we dazzle like diamonds. As I get older, my glittering spots will start to get smaller and fade. But I’m always going to shine as brightly as I can!
2. Seahorses are very romantic. When they are dating, they like to dance together, swirling round and round. It’s not the mum who gives birth to their babies either. Seahorses are the only species on earth where dads nurture pregnancies and give birth! Wouldn’t it be lovely if Dobbin and Swish have a family soon? They have been doing a lot of dancing after all.
3. Sea turtles have been around for a very, very long time. They are some of the oldest creatures on earth. Turtle fossils have been found that are 150 million years old. Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, so that just shows how old they are! Turtles spend most of their lives at sea, but female sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. They look a bit like ping pong balls and turtles can lay as many as 200 at a time! But most of the hatchlings won’t survive. It makes me sad to think that nearly all types of sea turtles are under threat of extinction.
4. Puffer fish are not very good swimmers. I feel mean saying this about Bubba and his friends, but most puffer fish are quite slow and clumsy in the water. That’s why they puff up! If they can’t escape quickly enough from a fish who is trying to eat them, they gulp in large amounts of water and puff up to look big and spiky to scare them away. Those poisonous spines sticking out make puffers really difficult to chew and swallow too.
5. Octopuses DO change colour! Remember when Otto camouflaged himself in the curtains during the battle in Coral’s living room? In the ocean, as well as in Coral’s living room, octopuses use this trick to hide from danger. They can change their size, colour, shape and size in a flash! They even shoot out black ink to make the water dark and cloudy so they can swim away from predators without being seen. I would love to be able to do those tricks, wouldn’t you?
6. Fish can kiss! There are fish with lips like Dr Sweetlips. The sweetlips species plant kisses on other fish. Nobody is quite sure why they pucker up, but it’s not always friendly. It could be a warning to other fish not to venture into their territory. I’m so glad Dr Sweetlips has such strong lips, because they saved my life!
7. Stingrays aren’t bad. Stealth is a very unusual stingray, because most of them in the ocean are actually kind and gentle. It’s only when they feel threatened that they will attack with their poisonous tail. Their flattened bodies help them hide in the sand and sometimes they get stepped on accidentally. Then they use their stinger in self-defence. We can’t blame them for trying to protect themselves, can we?
8. Eels are very bendy. Remember how Marvin ‘Hot Moves’ Mackenzie twisted himself into the shapes of letters to spell Coral’s name? Well, Marvin could do this because eels have more than a hundred tiny segments in their backbone, called vertebrae. This makes eels very flexible, which is great for busting moves on the dance floor, like Marvin!
9. Stonefish are the most poisonous fish in the world. That’s because each has sacks of venom on every one of its 13 spines. But these fish don’t often go out of their way to attack. The poison is to defend themselves. Even so, it’s no wonder Coral and I were a bit scared of Rocky and Edge at times. Amazingly, stonefish can survive up to 24 hours out of water, when I’d only last a few minutes! Gulp!
10. Sea urchins don’t have brains. Yup, the urchin army weren’t very clever were they? But sea urchins can be smart, even without brains. They have a nervous system that responds to what is happening around them instead. And wait for this – the red sea urchin can live for more than 200 years, which makes them one of the longest living creatures on earth!