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Like a cake, the ocean has different layers—each with its own characteristics.
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Ocean Layers

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The suckers of this red octopod flash on and off.
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Glowing Sucker Octopus

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Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) live in the warm coastal waters of tropical and subtropical oceans. Adults sometimes eat sponges, salps (floating jelly-like animals), and jellyfish, but they feed mostly on plants, like seagrass and algae. The pigment f
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Green Turtle

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Using dynamite to stun or kill bigger fish to sell at market leaves behind many dead undesired fish as bycatch.
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Fishing with Dynamite

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Jorge Velez-Juarbe, predoctoral fellow in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
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Jorge Velez-Juarbe

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Coral scientist Dr. Amy Baco-Taylor observed corals like these on her first submarine dive to a deep-sea coral bed off the coast of Hawaii.
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Deep-Sea Coral Community

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A young visitor holds up his painted fish Gyotaku fish print at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
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Gyotaku Fish Print

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“I took this photograph of spinner dolphins in calm waters off the Ogasawara Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles south of Tokyo. When the sun briefly broke through the clouds, our shadow was mirrored in the water’s surface—an
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Spinner Dolphins Ogasawara Island, Tokyo, Japan

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Photo of a sperm whale just below the water's surface.
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Sperm Whale, Dominica

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What is coral? The answer is coral is an animal. This cutaway diagram of a coral polyp shows the location of its photosynthetic algae, or zooxanthellae, which coral needs to survive.
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What Is Coral? A Coral Polyp and Zooxanthellae

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Spiral-tufted bryozoan
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A Bryozoan's Medical Endosymbiont

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