A lionfish looks like a living fan of stripes, ribbons, and spines. Divers stop to stare at it, and aquarium keepers pay good money to own one. Yet the same…
Some sharks scare people because of their size. The cookiecutter shark does it with a mouth shaped like a cookie cutter. This animal grows to about 20 inches long, yet…
A barracuda does not chase. It waits. It hangs almost perfectly still in the blue water near a reef edge, silver flank catching the light, and then it disappears in…
If you have ever locked eyes with a moray eel poking out of a reef crevice, you already know the feeling. That gaping mouth, those needle teeth, the way it…
If you have ever seen a hammerhead shark glide past a reef, you know the shape stops you mid-breath. That flat, wing-like head looks almost like a mistake of evolution,…
A great white surfaced twenty feet from my research skiff off Guadalupe Island the first time I studied one up close. It did not thrash or lunge. Instead, it looked…
A fisherman off Maui once pulled up a tiger shark with a car license plate lodged in its stomach. That single detail sums up why these animals fascinate researchers more…
I still remember my first dive off the coast of Belize. A reef shark cut across my dive light and vanished before my brain caught up. That split second basically…