Art By Kids From the Woods Hole Science Stroll!
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Happy National Wildlife Day! Here’s a comic showcasing some of my favorite ocean wildlife. You can easily help support ocean wildlife today by hosting an event, donating to your local zoo or sanctuary, volunteering for a local wildlife organization, or supporting @wildlifeday online! The most important thing, though, is to learn and be aware of how you can take care of the wildlife around you.
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Giant Pacific Octopus
Angel Shark
Angel Shark Conservation Network
Clownfish
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The “whiskers” of the catfish are actually called barbels, and they help catfish seek out food. There are many different species, and they range in size from 3 cm to 9.5 feet. They can survive in many environments, from almost freezing cold to nearly 100°F, and they have over 100,000 taste buds. Dogfish are usually small, usually less than 50 in, and spiny dogfish have venomous spines in front of their dorsal fins. They were named for their habit of hunting in large packs, like dogs, and they can be pregnant for up to 2 years!
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Dogfish
Catfish
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This drawing is a pretty quick one, just using colored pencils! There’s a whale shark, seahorses, a nautilus, a jellyfish, and some butterflyfish. Whale sharks are the world’s largest filter-feeding sharks and they’re able to process 6,000 liters of water an hour through gill plates in their mouths, which separate food, like plankton, from water. Each whale shark’s pattern is unique and to protect their eyes, they have teeth around their eyeballs! You may know that male seahorses are the ones who get pregnant, but did you know that seahorse couples greet each other with a mating dance every morning to strengthen their bond? Although seahorses aren’t good at swimming, they can move their heads very quickly to trap prey. Nautiluses are one of the oldest creatures in the ocean, dating back to 480 million years ago. They have over 90 tentacles without suckers, and as they grow, they gain more chambers in their shells. Butterflyfish have a distinct black spot on their back that helps them distract predators and are very common in coral reefs.
A diagram of a whale shark’s mouth.
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Whale Sharks
Seahorses
Nautiluses
Butterflyfish
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Here’s a drawing I did of a sea otter and its little pup! You may have heard that otters have the densest fur on earth – 1 million hairs per square inch, in fact – but did you know that they have two layers of fur to help them stay afloat and that pups are born with an extra coat that prevents them from diving into the water for two months? Sea otters are considered a keystone species because they’re essential to the food chains they’re a part of, and they use tools and their front paws to hunt, which is very rare. They even entangle each other in nets to keep them from drifting apart, which may be why a group of them is called a raft!
Sea otter awareness week is September 24th – 30th, so keep an eye out for more sea otter comics then!
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This is part of a drawing I recently did inspired by a beach vacation I just went on! It’s got some coral, shells, a lion’s mane jellyfish, and a dungeness crab. Did you know that there are six thousand species of coral currently discovered, or that some corals actually eat small fish? Lion’s mane jellyfish can grow to be over 120 feet long and have up to 1,200 tentacles, and they can often be found surrounded by small fish that use them for protection, kind of like a sea anemone. Finally, dungeness crabs can regenerate lost limbs and are really important in Alaskan fisheries, although they’re being negatively affected by ocean acidification.
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Corals
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
Crabs
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Here’s a recent drawing I did of a variety of ocean creatures! Did you know manta rays actually jump out of the water in huge groups? Or that they’re covered in a slimy mucous? Humpback whales, another sea creature in this picture, have migrations of over 5,000 miles and male humpback whales court females by singing songs. Moon jellies, the jellyfish with small tentacles, can actually be an invasive species because they breed so quickly. They were actually taken to space in one experiment to see how their organs were affected by zero gravity!
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Manta Rays
Humpback Whales
Jellyfish
Monterey Bay Aquarium – Check out the live jellyfish cam!
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