Real Ocean Superpowers
Whale song really does travel for miles.
Dolphins really can see with sound.
Fish really do have a superpower called the lateral line.
Bleckmann, H. & Zelick, R. (2009). Lateral line system of fish. Integrative Zoology, 4(1), 13–25.
Some shrimp can snap a claw so fast it makes a bubble pop like a firecracker.
Versluis, M., Schmitz, B., von der Heydt, A. & Lohse, D. (2000). How snapping shrimp snap: through cavitating bubbles. Science, 289(5487), 2114–2117.
Plankton make about half of all the oxygen on earth.
Sea turtles can hold their breath for up to two hours when resting.
Ocean Facts
Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in our ocean.
Borrelle, S. B. et al. (2020). Predicted growth in plastic waste exceeds efforts to mitigate plastic pollution. Science, 369(6510), 1515–1518. The study estimates that 19 to 23 million metric tons of plastic waste entered the world’s waters in 2016 alone.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn’t really an island at all.
NOAA describes the nickname as misleading. The debris is spread through the water and down to the ocean floor, and much of it is microplastic smaller than five millimetres, which is why some areas look empty from a boat.
Sea turtles mistake floating plastic bags for jellyfish.
Schuyler, Q. A., Wilcox, C., Townsend, K., Hardesty, B. D. & Marshall, N. J. (2014). Mistaken identity? Visual similarities of marine debris to natural prey items of sea turtles. BMC Ecology, 14, 14.
Every fact in this book was checked against these sources before it was printed. If you find something we got wrong, please tell us — we would rather fix it than defend it.