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The toothy goby or common ghost goby (Pleurosicya mossambica) lives among soft corals and sponges in the Indo-Pacific ocean. The relationship it has with its host is commensal, which means the goby benefits from the protection and habitat in the corals, but the coral doesn't get hurt or benefit from the relationship.

A colony of 100 million flame shells (Limaria hians) was discovered in Scotland in 2012, and is thought to be the biggest in the world. Flame shells are bivalve mollusks that are shaped a bit like scallops—but they have bright orange tentacles exuding from their shells. Despite their bright color, flame shells are very hard to spot because they hide in self-constructed felt-like nests.

This deep-sea black coral from Hawaii (Leiopathes sp.) is more than 4,200 years old.

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 your fingernails - keratin.

Discover more about this species in A Tale of A Whale, a photo essay about a whale named Phoenix.

These candy cane snapping shrimp (Alpheus randalli) have a pretty nice set up. They share their living space with goby fish, helping the fish dig and maintain the burrow that they share in the seafloor. In turn the small, and mostly blind, shrimp (seen in this photo below the goby) get protection from predators in the form of alerts from the goby and a place to call home.

Ever heard of a cookie-cutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis)? They look like your average shark—sort of menacing and streamlined—but their name comes from how they feed. They eat smaller animals (like squid) whole, but also take large, round cookie-cutter shaped bites out of larger animals, such as tuna, whales, dolphins, and seals (which you can see in this picture of an elephant seal). They suction on to the larger animals and twist around to take a bite of flesh using their lower row of sharp teeth.

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 way – with two jaws. The second set of jaws is in their throat, which shoots up and grabs the prey from the main pair of jaws, drawing the prey down to the esophagus.

The jingle shell (Anomia simplex) is a common bivalve found on the Atlantic coast of North America, amongst the more commonly known clams and oysters. As with oysters, the lower shell is glued to a hard surface. Even after the mollusk is dead, the shell keeps its beautiful and shiny exterior. The thin, translucent shells are often used in jewelry, and when strung together can sound like bells, hence the name.

As we dive deeper into winter in the northern hemisphere, the possibility of snow becomes an increasingly frequent topic of conversation. But did you know that the ocean gets a regular dose of ‘marine snow’ year round? The flakes in the ocean are made up of poop from animals, decaying animals and other types of organic matter that slowly make their way to the seafloor—if they aren’t eaten along the way!

It’s not an easy question to answer. In the lab, scientists can set up a series of seawater tanks with a variety of pH levels to figure out how different species react to more acidic water, observing the structure of their shells, their metabolism, or their behavior. Or researchers can go to areas with naturally high carbon dioxide and acid levels, such as natural carbon dioxide seeps, to study how those ecosystems are faring.

A tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) in flight against a gray sky in Alaska’s Pribilof Islands (USA). Puffins are charismatic seabirds that delight wildlife enthusiasts and draw tourists to the islands where they nest. Read about the return of Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) to Maine in Smithsonian Magazine.