Some of the life found beneath the ocean waves
is nothing short of shocking.
Cartoon eyes, monstrous mouths,
skeleton faces, and crazy camouflage:
all adaptations that give these oddballs an obvious edge.
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Hidden beneath this black volcanic sand
lives a frightening-looking fish.
This bug-eyed, toothy menace resembling a human skull
is called a stargazer.
More than a few divers have been flustered
by its gruesome teeth and skull-like face.
The stargazer lives throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans
in relatively shallow waters, at depths of 15 to 500 feet.
It hunts at night, in the murky sediment
that locals call "the muck."
The dense, swirling waters are home to some of the world's
most bizarre aquatic predators.
Demon stingers, lionfish, stonefish -
the list of predators stalking these
nutrient-rich hunting grounds is long.
Stargazers are part of a family of fish called perciformes,
the largest and most diverse group of modern bony fishes.
And while the name stargazer conjures images of dreamy nights
spent staring skyward, this fish has more in common
with the grim reaper.
This one is a whitemargin stargazer.
It has a specialized organ behind its eyes
that can produce an electric shock.
It's like a 50-volt taser.
Not enough to hurt a human,
but more than enough to stun and incapacitate prey.
The foot-long fish has two sharp bony spines folded down along
the thickest part of its back, just above its pectoral fins.
They're filled with toxic venom.
These spines are meant to deter predators,
and the venom the Stargazer releases can kill them,
and cause humans a serious wound.
The Stargazer is breathtakingly fast,
particularly when it comes to lunging at passers-by.
But the fish is a weak swimmer, so rather than pursuing prey,
this one buries itself into the sand
and waits for prey to come to it.
It hunkers down, wriggling and twisting its way
into the smoking muck.
One last wriggle and it settles into its lair.
Dug in on the sea floor, camouflaged and motionless,
it's easy to see why Stargazers are called ambush killers.
Normally the movement of a fish's gills
would be visible while it's breathing.
The Stargazer is using its gills,
but it's hard to see while it's buried.
That's because the Stargazer has a pair of flaps
that hide the gill openings.
These flaps allow water to flow smoothly out over the gills.
Not a ripple, not a bubble.
And so the Stargazer doesn't reveal its location.
The stargazer waits motionless until some kind of prey,
usually a fish, swims above it.
The only movement its top-mounted eyes,
gazing starward, tracking every move.
Game over.
The huge upward-facing mouth is its main weapon.
And that jagged row of teeth-like bumps,
known as cirri, act like a zipper,
preventing sand from falling into the stargazer's mouth.
The ambush itself is lightning fast.
It's hard not to feel sorry for this unsuspecting cardinal fish.
It's drifted over the wrong place at the wrong time.
Swallowed alive, a puff of sand
is all that remains of the attack.
It takes a bit of work to swallow it whole,
but finally the job is done.
As you can imagine, ambush hunting is tedious work.
The evening meal depends a lot on good fortune.
So, to improve its odds,
the Stargazer has evolved a helping hand.
Like the anglerfish, the Stargazer has a special lure.
At the end of its tongue is a small worm-like ribbon
it uses to attract prey.
It spits it out on the sea floor,
flicking and flopping it around,
mimicking a worm, hoping its prey will find it irresistible.
And when another victim takes the bait, it lunges.
Not every lunge is successful.
But there's always another chance.
Cunningly disguised on the sea floor,
this stargazer will likely never go without.
One thing's for sure: in this place of murky mysteries,
things are rarely what they seem,
and it pays to always be on the lookout.
Frogfish are an underwater wonder.
They're still most of the time,
favoring blending in over standing out.
Their bodies can be over-looked as they lie motionless
on the ocean floor.
As it waddles by,
this hairy frogfish hardly seems fish-like at all.
So it's not hard to imagine that this mess of fronds
could be confused with another animal.
Indeed, fishermen once thought it was a type of frog.
Its squat body could be the reason.
Its fins have joints, so instead of swimming
it prefers to hop along the sea floor
using its fins as little legs.
It took hundreds of years for humans to figure out
that this is all fish.
Maybe not the most beautiful fish,
but certainly one of the most bizarre.
This hairy beast looks like it's out of breath;
as though trudging through silt and sand has left it winded.
It might seem comical to us,
but to any sea life passing by, it's no laughing matter.
This big mouth means business.
Witness the fastest bite among all vertebrates.
The frogfish can snap its mouth shut
at a speed of 650 miles per hour.
That's faster than a speeding bullet.
It opens its mouth, swallows its prey,
and closes its big jaw in 6 milliseconds.
Too fast for the human eye to perceive.
The only evidence that it succeeded?
Now you see it, now you don't.
The hairy frogfish prefers to hide or blend in
whenever it can, pretending to be a soft coral or a sea fan.
The unsuspecting reef fish have no idea
they're swimming next to the fastest draw in the ocean.
This fish is among the world's elite ambush predators,
thanks to its combination of stealth and speed.
This type of frogfish is covered in fleshy protrusions
called spinules.
They help camouflage it.
But all frogfish - some 50-odd species -
can assume some incredibly brilliant disguises.
They use all kinds of elaborate camouflage.
But for this female
there's no hiding from a smaller, male suitor.
He senses the large female is carrying eggs,
and that makes her a magnet.
He'll follow her, and when she's ready to release them,
he'll be first in line to fertilize them.
The mating ritual between these two appears to have just begun.
The eggs in her abdomen
- anywhere between 40,000 to 180,000 -
will continue to grow over several hours,
and her abdomen will enlarge.
The male will pursue her for up to two days,
until her eggs are ready and the two of them can spawn.
Then, their co-parenting will be over as quickly as it began.
They'll both go back to a solitary life
until the next breeding time.
As a type of anglerfish,
the hairy frogfish knows a thing or two about fishing.
It has a built-in rod, and a lure.
It's called an esca.
It looks like a wriggling worm -
perfect to seduce its naive prey.
The frogfish uses it to catch anything from fish,
to crab, to shrimp.
It piques the curiosity of unsuspecting passers by.
The frogfish's iridescent eyes follow its prey,
watching until the moment is right.
With an enormous gape,
it can increase the capacity of its mouth by 12 times.
By creating a vacuum that sucks the prey into its mouth,
a frogfish can consume a fish up to half its size.
But a smaller fish will do just fine, in a pinch.
Bigmouth strikes again.
With its gorgeous hues and googly eyes,
this marine creature stands out in the gloomy depths
of the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Named for the peacock-like coloring on its shell,
it's one of the ocean's most enigmatic
and dangerous creatures.
The peacock mantis shrimp.
It's actually not a mantis, nor a shrimp.
Mantis shrimp are the last surviving members
of an ancient family of crustaceans.
And for a relatively small marine creature
- anywhere from 1 to 7 inches -
this bottom crawler has an enormous presence.
It's one of the most aggressive hunters in the animal kingdom,
able to strike a deadly blow in a fraction of a second.
This creature is built to fight.
Like the praying mantis, it has specialized forelimbs
tucked under its body until it's ready to use them.
Using a spring-like mechanism, this crustacean's limbs
can accelerate up to 1000 times faster than a fighter jet.
That gives the peacock mantis shrimp
the fastest right hook in the animal kingdom.
The enormous force easily smashes the shells
of big crabs and mollusks.
Calcium-based minerals strengthen the mantis shrimp's
forelimbs, making them resistant to breaking.
These limbs can absorb extreme impacts.
So this mantis shrimp can smash with abandon.
If this incredible beating weren't enough,
it strikes a second blow.
The speed of a mantis shrimp's punch is so fast
it boils the water around it.
The phenomenon is known as cavitation.
When the boiling bubbles collapse,
they cause a small shockwave that destroys the target.
So even if the shrimp doesn't knock out its target
the first time around,
the imploding bubbles can still take it down.
The crustacean's super strength
makes it an excellent builder, too.
It digs U-shaped burrows out of coral and rocks
to create the perfect home.
And if it's not perfect,
it'll just move to a different neighborhood.
Even with the mantis shrimp's brute strength,
it's smart enough to know that it's better to avoid a fight.
It can smell through the water,
so when it senses trouble is coming, it hides in its burrow.
If the potential intruder comes too close, a mantis shrimp will
create vibrations by shaking its muscles inside its exoskeleton.
These acoustic signals are a warning to stay away.
Don't let its tiny head fool you.
There are brains behind this brawn,
which takes its hunting skills to the next level.
A mantis shrimp has the most complex eyes
in the animal kingdom.
Each eye is trinocular,
meaning it has incredibly accurate depth perception.
Plus each eye can move independently
on the end of its stalk, helping it detect advancing predators
and locate prey with the utmost precision.
The black bands and spots in the middle of its eye
show where the animal is looking.
But the central stripe going in the other direction
has scientists intrigued.
That stripe contains millions of light-sensitive cells
called rods and cones.
Humans have rods and cones too;
rods for black and white, cones for color.
But humans have only three types of color receptive cones:
red, blue and green.
A mantis shrimp has 12 types of cones to detect color,
and another four that analyze polarized light.
This means that it's able to see ultraviolet wavelengths.
And this crustacean should be able to see
an incredible spectrum.
But it's actually not very good
at distinguishing between colors.
Mantis shrimp eyes are so complicated
that humans are just scratching the surface
on how this crustacean sees, and why.
A peacock mantis shrimp
is solitary for most of its adult life.
But at mating time, it relies on its acoustic messaging
to communicate with other mantis shrimp and to attract mates.
Peacock mantis shrimp breeds year round,
mating, spawning, and hatching their eggs inside their dens.
Once she lays her eggs, a female peacock mantis shrimp
carries the massive clutch around for 40 days,
during which time she won't even eat.
She'll take care of them,
aerating and cleaning them until they hatch.
After hatching, the larvae will leave the safety of the burrow.
And within a few months, a new generation
of fully mature adults will establish themselves,
content to hide out in the rocky crevices of the ocean.
Scooting along the ocean floor is a master of disguise.
This is the grunt sculpin,
a small fish with a big personality.
It's part of the super-family Cottoidea,
which includes sculpins, sea ravens and poachers.
Not the most complimentary names,
but this compact species has some outstanding qualities.
Like this: (Squealing)
This little fish gets its name not from how it looks,
but how it sounds.
(Grunting)
That said, it does have some odd physical features too.
The grunt sculpin has a massive head
that makes up half of its body size.
Even though it's a fish, it doesn't have scales.
Instead, it has small plates,
which are covered in tiny spines for armor.
Its fins and tail are a bright, flashy orange,
and emerge from under the plates
as though they're part of a completely different fish.
The grunt sculpin is a bit of a motley mashup.
This curious appearance helps it blend in with the scenery.
It lives in tide pools, rocky areas, and high-current
coastal waters in the cool north Pacific Ocean.
These are habitats favored by giant barnacles.
And so, this odd, hunchbacked fish
has adapted to live in empty barnacle shells.
When it's all tucked in with just its head sticking out,
predators can't tell the difference.
And if just its flashy orange tail sticks out,
it looks like a barnacle feeding.
If barnacle shells aren't available,
the grunt sculpin will just as happily use bottles, cans,
and other ocean floor debris to hide away.
It prefers to stay out of sight.
Because racing away from predators is barely an option.
The grunt sculpin's movements are awkward at best.
It doesn't quite swim, but instead scuttles across the
ocean floor on the tips of its finger-like fins,
twitching, hopping, and strutting over rocks.
Awkward and lurching, maybe, but this fish can cop an attitude.
The Grunt sculpin is territorial and aggressive.
One of the ways it communicates is the grunt:
(Grunting)
Researchers believe it's a territorial call.
The female is the true bully of this species,
especially at mating time.
The female chases a male into a barnacle shell,
trapping him in there while she lays her eggs.
Then he has no choice but to fertilize them.
With a devil may care attitude, she saunters off,
leaving him to guard the nest.
This sassy fish is a carnivore that feasts on tiny crustaceans,
plankton, and larvae on the sea floor.
Its long, bill-like snout has thick lips and tiny teeth,
perfect for getting into all the nooks and crannies
in its habitat.
And that's ideal for a tiny sea creature
that will only ever grow to be about 3 inches long.
There aren't any other fish quite like the grunt sculpin.
As the only member of the fish family Rhamphocottidae,
this strange-looking fish is truly one of a kind.
The ocean is bursting with life,
some of it beautiful, some of it bizarre.
But looks can be deceiving.
There's often more than meets the eye,
and these ocean oddities have adapted to their watery home
in the most unusual ways.
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