From PBS Digital Studios’s UnderH2O team, go on a Blackwater Drift Dive: 

The vast, unexplored ocean is filled with wonderful and mysterious creatures. This week, we journey far offshore for a midnight drift dive with over 1,000 feet of water between us and the seafloor. The animals here are bizarre and beautiful, and little is known about their biology. 

Related viewing: The Deep Sea, The Secret Life of Plankton, The Plankton Chronicles: Sea Urchin, and Green Bomber Worms.

What if you didn’t send food down to your stomach to digest it, but you sent your stomach up to your food instead? This is exactly what the sunflower seastar does. With 16 to 24 arms and 15,000 tube feet to help grab, open and eat clams, snails, abalone, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins.

The sunflower star is the largest sea star in the world. It’s also one of the fastest animals on the ocean bottom, crawling one metre… a minute, which may not seem that fast to us but is speedy if you’re a clam just chillin’ on the sand. 

You can read more about the sunflower seastar at aquablog.ca.

From KQED Quest, the challenges and new research being explored by marine biologists that breed, collect and care for jellyfish and siphonophores at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.

Learn more about the diverse family tree of jelly-like creatures in this beautiful HD video from the Aquarium’s Research Institute, or watch more about marine biology.

Watch the miraculous journey of infant sea turtles as these tiny animals run the gauntlet of predators and harsh conditions. Then, in numbers, see how human behavior has made their tough lives even more challenging.

Has the kid seen The Survival of the Sea Turtle, for TEDEd, by Scott Gass? Animated by Veronica Wallenberg and Johan Sonestedt.

Previously: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle hatchlings.

A preview from The Deep Sea, ep11 of the BBC’s Nature’s Microworlds: 

Steve Backshall takes us to a place few have ever visited - the deep sea. 99 per cent of the space on Earth inhabited by life is under the ocean and almost 90 per cent of this is deeper than a kilometre, a place of perpetual darkness and crushing pressure. Far from being lifeless, the vast inner space of our planet contains an extraordinary array of beautiful and bizarre creatures, from 40m-long jellyfish to grotesque angler fish and vampire squid. Our journey from the sunlit surface waters to the deepest reaches of the abyss reveals how life persists in such a hostile world.