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The Design of a Beautiful Weapon

This male dancing fiddler crab (Uca terpsichores) has built a sand “hood” at the entrance to his burrow, which he hopes will attract females to his humble abode—as if that big beautiful claw of his weren't enough!

September 2013

Seaside Lichens

Horizontal bands of color represent different species of lichen that have adapted to the conditions at different heights above sea level.

August 2015

The Sant Ocean Hall: Life in the Sand Exhibit

10 grains of star shaped sand collected from southern Japan

September 2011

The Peninsula Valdes in Argentina was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1999. The site is home to important breeding populations of the endangered southern right whale (Eubalaena australis), southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina), and southern sea

Slideshow

Marine World Heritage Photo Gallery

Spirals in Time: A Walk at the Seashore

Rough periwinkles sit on a bed of barnacles.

July 2015

A screenshot from the video showing trash on a rocky beach.

Video

Trash on the Beach and in the Ocean

Taking the Temperature of the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle

A juvenile Kemp's ridley sea turtle emerges from the nest

May 2014

On Moorea, an island in French Polynesia, researchers are striving to complete a biocode—a DNA catalog of every life form big enough to pick up with tweezers.

Overview

Scientists Catalog Life on the Island of Moorea

Microscopic beach dweller in the sand.

Video

Organisms Beneath the Sand

A screenshot from the video showing a fiddler crab with a large claw.

Video

Claws Out: Fiddler Crabs Do Battle

The Great Hermit Crab Migration

A Caribbean hermit crab (Coenobita clypeatus) crawls on the forest floor.

September 2012