< Reef News Index
13th of November 2018
Dreaming of a Green Christmas
- Clownfish can swim 9.5 body lengths a second within 24 hours of birth. To put this into perspective, Australian five time Olympic gold medallist, Ian Thorpe ‘only’ swam at a speed of 2 body lengths per second.
- Red Bass are the longest living fish on the Great Barrier Reef, living up to 50 years.
- The slowest horse on the planet is the sea horse, taking 2,5 days to travel 1km. The Dwarf Seahorse is the slowest of the sea horses, travelling at 5 feet per hour.
- Seven-figure pigmy goby is the shortest living vertebrate, at 60 days.
- Toad fish males ‘sing’ at 100 decibels with their swim bladders to attract mates.
- The most venomous known fish is the reef stone fish.
- Tiger Sharks can weigh up to 900kg!
- 85% of the world’s oxygen is produced by marine plants, demonstrating their immense importance to life both above and below the surface.
- Some scientists suggest that the Lions Mane Jellyfish is the longest animal on earth. The Lions Mane Jellyfish can grow up to 120ft (the majority of the length due to its ridiculously long tentacles) and the largest recorded Blue Whale measured at 108ft. Some scientists argue however that the title should go to the Saltwater Bootlace Worm, which when fully stretched out can reach lengths of 180ft!!
- The GBR is home to some aquatic ‘dinosaurs’: Turtles (150 million years), Crocodiles (200 million years) and Sharks (400 million years).
- Crown of Thorns Starfish (or COTS) are considered one of the key predators on the Reef, feeding on healthy coral and coral polyps. But do you know how they devour their prey? The Crown of Thorns ‘vomits’ out their stomach so that flows into the gaps of the coral, which it slowly digests with the help of special enzymes present within the stomach. The average Crown of Thorns Starfish digests approximately 6m2 of living coral per year using this method.
- The Great Barrier Reef is home to 6 of the 7 species of marine turtle. The only species that cannot be found while exploring the underwater world of The Great Barrier Reef is the Kemp’s Ridley which is mostly found on the sandy, muddy bottoms in the Gulf of Mexico.
