Creepy Critters: Marine Life Surfaces for Halloween

Claws, spines, spikes, tentacles, and fangs. Aliens, monsters, and ghostly apparitions glowing in the night. Marine life forms have some of the best looks for Halloween—no costumes needed. From freaky fish lurking beneath the surface to creepy crawlies of the deep, meet some of the sea’s strangest and most haunting characters. Then tell us: Which ocean creature scares you the most?

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Comments

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 10:24am.

Nature is usually weirder than fiction.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 1:09pm.

this one is the scariest to me. Those teeth are scary

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 1:34pm.

The blob sculpin is definitely ghoulish! It looks like a ghost of a sad human being. Very scary.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 2:51pm.

Without a doubt, the creepiest for me is the giant isopod!

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 3:31pm.

Definitely not frightened by the cute, if not cuddly, horseshoe crab. I love these living fossils from past ages. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but ugly shouldn't necessarily be scary. I think several of these are cute such as the rabbitfish. Big fangs do scare me even if they are small, so I'd have to go with the fangtooth fish.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 4:18pm.

fangtooth fish

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 4:35pm.

Of these, the goblin sculpin looks the creepiest, in a cute way. But to me, the most scary-looking of sea creatures is the goblin shark. Thanks for putting up these photos; they are so interesting!!

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 4:50pm.

All scary but I think the scariest is a moray eel.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/29/2010 - 6:30pm.

fish?

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 10/30/2010 - 4:19am.

Spooky fishes

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 10/30/2010 - 9:43pm.

Life is an amazingly wonderful array of adaptations! Each picture was a reminder that life and survival does find its way. Our ocean world is captivating!

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 10:27pm.

The sculpin is the scariest! It's like a fish-jabba-the-hutt !

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 11/02/2010 - 8:49am.

Hi to me the scariest fish in this slide show is The Blackdevil fish and the smaleyed rabbitfish>>>>>>>> CREEPY.....

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 11:01am.

The caption for the picture of the horseshoe crab says it has seven pairs of legs. This animal has 6 pairs of legs, not 7 (I've counted).

Submitted by Ocean Portal Team on Mon, 11/08/2010 - 6:54pm.

Thanks for your comment and for paying such close attention! It's hard to see, but horseshoe crabs do indeed have seven pairs of legs. The seventh pair, called the chilaria, very small "remnant legs" that are up under the middle of the shell. They are difficult to see, but are labeled in this diagram of the crab's underside from the University of Delaware's SeaGrant Program.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/05/2010 - 4:12pm.

wow amazing fish and crustaceans but my favorite creepey creature is the fifth one

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 01/19/2011 - 1:51pm.

I've seen one of these halloween freaky fishes. I was fishing in oceanside harbor around 1:00 a.m for spotted bay bass. It was a full moon and all of the sudden this albino prehistoric looking fish surfaced. I yelled for my wife that was fishing with me to come and check it out. I tried taking some pictures with my phone, but it was too dark. What a trip that someone else came across the same fish.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 04/08/2011 - 2:38pm.

these animals are the scariest things i have ever seen please take more photos of scary animals.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 05/06/2011 - 2:41pm.

i like the first 1 its scary :)

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 09/22/2011 - 8:05pm.

great pic love to see more.

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 10/25/2011 - 1:15am.

I love it! I carved an angler fish on my pumpkin a couple Halloweens ago and this year I did a vampire squid jack-o-lantern.
The isopod creeps me out. The idea of the smaller isopods serving as a fish tongue parasite makes me a little squeamish.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 7:10pm.

marvelouos. i'll show it to my middle school sci classes

Submitted by Ocean Portal Team on Fri, 10/28/2011 - 3:22pm.

Glad you like these "creepy" critters! We hope your science classes enjoy the slideshow, and learn from it, too!

-The Ocean Portal Team

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 10/30/2011 - 7:13am.

wow, ilove it and showed them to my kids.
These animals are wierd and amazing.Iam sure that they r there for a reason.
Thank u for the pic. and hope the next time to see and know more.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/10/2011 - 4:05pm.

Scientific names would be nice; I'm sure some of these guys have different common names and/or similar species they may get confused with. Great photography nonetheless!

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/25/2011 - 11:59am.

very scariest ever!

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/25/2011 - 12:00pm.

nature is very wierdy!

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/25/2011 - 12:04pm.

creative!

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