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Hi, I’m Nemo (the orange one), one of the famous stars in a movie called “Finding Nemo”.  I prefer to have myself nestled in an anemone. I’ve symbiotic relationships with certain anemones. I’m happy to live together with Mr. Anemone. We can get along very well here, and always benefit from each other. Our friendship is TRUE as he provides me protection, and to repay his kindness, I feed and clean his body.

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These jellyfish are beautiful. They look like a crystallized lantern flashing through the “dark sky” of the sea. They’re invertebrates that range in size from approximately 2 ½ cm to 61m long. My grandpa told me that their species have been here for more than 650 million years. So, they’re our “senior”. Interesting facts I come across these jellyfish are that they’ve no brains, no heads, no eyes, no ears, and no hearts. They use their net of tentacles which contain deadly poisonous and stinging cells to capture prey for food. When their tentacles “rub through” the prey, you’ll see thousands of their tiny stinging cells explode, and later it’s followed by launching barbed stingers and poison against their prey.

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They’re known as Nudibranchs which means “naked gill” in Latin as they carry their exposed plume-like external gills on their backs. Unlike the snails, they don’t have shell to cover their soft bodies from injuries and scratches. Despite the absence of the hard shells, they use a defend strategy called cryptic coloration or in a simple word “camouflage” to protect themselves (quoted from my previous article entitled Butterflies of the Sea: Flamboyantly Decorated Marine Animals).

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Though these naked sea slugs have a relatively large arsenal, their sizes are roughly of a human’s index finger. Their average sizes can reach to about 50mm. That’s why they always become a quick snack and an easy digested food for turtles, sea stars, humans, and even marine organisms(quoted from my previous article entitled Butterflies of the Sea: Flamboyantly Decorated Marine Animals).

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She’s weird with her yellow eyelid, but strange though, she’s just won an award of “Miss Universe 2009″ held two days ago in our home here. No wonder, she keeps on swaying her tail!

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Most hatchet fish have tabular and large eyes that pointing upward to enable them to search for food falling from the above besides helping them to combat predators. At the great depths, their eyes are sensitive to light  (quoted from my previous article entitled The Spookiest Deep Sea Marine Animals).

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This snake-like deep sea creature is called Fimbriated Moray Eel, or scientifically it is named as Gymnothorax Fimbriatus. It is found lying under a coral reef ledge on a shore off the coast of Anilao in Philippines (quoted from my previous article entitled Exploring the most incredible world of sea aliens of the deep).

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This fellow is named as Mantis shrimp. He’s like any crustaceans, which is equipped with typical features of sharp spines on the tail, sharp and strong claws, and two well developed eyes. His claws can be folded neatly under his head, and they can also be unfolded to impale his prey.

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The flamingo tongue snail (cyphoma gibbosumn) is a small, colorful sea snail which lives on various species of soft corals in the Caribbean.This creature almost-literally wears its heart (soul and colors) on its sleeve… And they’re only beautiful (with all that color) while they’re alive. The dead ones are just ugly white shells… (quoted from my previous article entitled Odd-looking marine animals).

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She’s Hawksbill turtle. She has an elongated head and a beak-like mouth. She’s among the most unique marine animal here. I’ve long admired her patience and strength to struggle for life here. But sadly to say, these days, I’ve hardly seen her smiling. Thinking of how her species are being threatened by the loss of feeding and nesting habitats, coastal pollution, and excessive egg-collection, she’s immersed with tears. Her tears break my heart off. I therefore urge you humans to protect this endangered animal and please don’t hurt her again!

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Here are some tiny animals, about a size of a pencil eraser, bloom proudly on the ocean floor. They’re called coral polyps that make coral reefs. They’ve no bone, just like any invertebrates you found on earth. To protect their soft bodies, they grow in a hard case, in which the case resembles a small cup.

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Coral polyps live together in a large group called colonies. When they die, their cups stay there with the new corals grow on top of them. And you’ll find the living coral polyps which is a layer that sits on top of the old cups. Over years, these cups can form a “high-rise building” over the ocean floor. They’re a “professional architect” that can make reefs even larger than any buildings human has ever built. The reefs they made, in fact, can be any huge “construction” ever made by these living things! Amazing though!

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Do you know that the world’s largest and longest (about 1,250 miles long) coral reef is the Great Barrier Reef? Locating in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia, the Great Barrier Reef accommodates 2,900 individual reefs, and 900 islands stretching for 2,600km over an area of about 344,400 square kilometers. It’s built by billions of tiny organisms called coral polyps, which supports a wide diversity of life.

Brain Corals

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Staghorn Corals

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Fire Corals

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Sea-Fan Corals

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Mushroom Corals

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Corals appear in many spectacular shapes. Staghorn corals, fire corals, sea-fan corals, mushroom corals, brain corals are some of their examples.

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Brain corals have always become a “rest house” for one octopus called octopus vulgaris. Mdm. Octopus here is a typical “housewife” and she’s always found prowling the reef in between the brain corals before sunset. Don’t you think her posture is cool? Hey, she’s waiting for your camera’s shot! “I’m gettin’ ready, camera ahoy!”she shouted at you.

Coral reefs are a perfect “playground” for us marine animals. When I swim across these odd colorful reefs, I see many of my friends, starfish, shrimps, crabs, eels and other marine creatures swimming gracefully with their bodies swaying around the coral reefs.

Sometimes, I can’t stop myself from seeing this magnificent scene. It’s so beautiful! I love to stay in the coral reefs until mom comes to pull me back.

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Lionfish, filefish, seahorse, parrot fish, sea slug, and turtle are special guests here. They patronize these coral reefs very often. Mr. Turtle told me that there are about thousands of coral colonies within one individual coral reef. This coral colony can have a variety of shape. Some look like flowers. Some even look like tree branches. Some are soft like sea-fan corals.

Generally, corals are living animals, they aren’t plants anyway. Therefore, they must obtain food to survive in the marine environment.

We’re proud here because of the presence of corals. They’re beautiful and they turned our dull surrounding into colorful underwater garden.

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But one thing that scared me is that this coral polyp has many arms called tentacles. When I was at two years old, I used to call this creature “ALIEN”. Later, when I was six, I developed courage to approach the coral polyp and made friend with them. They convinced me by saying, “Kid, don’t be afraid! Our arms won’t hurt you. We actually use our arms to catch tiny water animals to feed our stomach.” They also told me that when they wave their arms, meaning that they’re searching for meals.

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I was astonishingly shocked to see how fast they use their arms to sweep a tiny animal or fish into their mouths! Gee…gee, scary “bug” indeed! I’ll never have these creatures in my mouth!!

When the reef grows abundantly, the ocean waves bring along tiny plants to the reef. These tiny plants then conquered the land of the reefs by rooting their “legs” in the limited space among the reefs. I was told by Mr. Reef that these tiny plants are destroyers to their peaceful life. Their life becomes upside down with the presence of these destroyers. “They’re very smart to make their “illegal homes” here”, said Mr. Reef.

“Nemo, it’s sad to tell you that…these destroyers bring “curse” to our life…”, and I saw tears rolling down from the cheek of Mrs. Reef.

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What happened next? Fish and other animals rush here to eat coral polyps and the plants. And the worst thing is followed by heavy traffic congestion due to a large school of fish who patronize here with the aims to grab their meals instead.

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Not soon after that, the second nightmare hit the fate of the reefs. Larger fish are coming to hunt for smaller creatures as their meals.

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Oh no, Mr. Shark is coming! Like other small animals, I’m lucky to have a space to hide among the odd shapes of the coral reef. Thank you, Mr. Reef, you’ve rescued me from the danger and at the same time, you’re so kind to give the smaller marine creatures lots of hiding places to hide from being captured by their predators.

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Can you see a spiky orange animal? We call him a crown-of thorns starfish. He’s a bad guy. He eats coral polyps.

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Besides starfish, sea urchins are another destroyer that has damaged some reefs. If they’re too many of them, coral reefs may be harmed in a tremendous manner.

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Today, coral polyps don’t have a colorful body to be proud of as during the time of their ancestors. Many of them have turned white due to warmer temperature water. It’s called coral bleaching by the scientists. Coral polyps, nowadays, have either no color or bright color as they don’t obtain the important nutrients anymore from their plant guests. In the worst situation, they stop growing and may even die.

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The world’s ocean is now facing global warming. Perhaps, one day, the diver can only gather chunk of corals instead of the REAL beauty of the corals. Perhaps, one day, you may not know how beautiful our world is as our environment has been seriously polluted by a build-up of certain poisonous gases, harmful chemicals, heavy metals, oil spills, that have day by day get our habitat contaminated and destroyed.

It isn’t too late for you humans to do something to save the life of my friends which include coral reefs, turtles, shrimps, crabs, sea slugs and other marine creatures. Please help save our environment! Let’s not damage our habitat but keep our beautiful and magical underwater dream lands blossoming!

WHOOSH! The time went away so FAST, I’ve almost spent a day with you. The night is falling. Mom must be worried at my loss; I’ve to go back now! Goodnight, my friend! I hope you’ve an enjoyable day! Take care! Got to go now, BYE-BYE! Best regards from me, NEMO.

Now, you can read more of my works at my science blog ScienceQuest.