Here is BBC’s Natural World trailer: “The lady that swims with Killer Whales”. New Zealander Steve Hathaway shot the underwater footage and it follows the amazing work of Ingrid Visser. Check her work out at the Orca Research Trust.

Gopro -100 meter deep alon rivkind Free dive israeli record from albert banon on Vimeo.

After years of looking for the big stuff we were getting a little bored. Then we discovered blennies. Blennies are everywhere and we travel the globe to find them. No seas are too rough, no dive site too remote and no blenny too fearsome. Features short clips of blennies from Bonaire, Florida, Baja California, the Philippines and Indonesia. Visit Blenny Watcher.

skeleton shrimp encounters from Mike Elliott on Vimeo.

Skeleton shrimp are always entertaining and this is about what they deal with on a regular basis.

Jetties At Night from Alex.Be. on Vimeo.

Macro Version – Under The Jetties from Alex.Be. on Vimeo.

You could call it a whale of a “swarm”—the biggest observed gathering of whale sharks was spotted off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula (see map) in 2009, according to a recent study. Snapped from a small plane, the above picture shows a white boat (bottom right) amid the fishy gathering.

Usually the oceans’ biggest fish—which reach lengths of up to 40 feet (12 meters)—stick to themselves as they cruise the world’s tropical waters looking for plankton and other small prey. (See picture: “Smallest Whale Shark Discovered—On a Leash.”)

“To see a group of that many all in one place was phenomenal—to the point where you couldn’t navigate a boat through that without having concern for the fish. That’s impressive,” said study co-author Mike Maslanka, head of the Nutrition Science Department at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia.

Read more at National Geographic

This 405-year-old quahog clam, recently fished from Icelandic waters, could be the oldest animal ever found. If confirmed, the mollusk beats the official record-holder—another quahog clam—by nearly 200 years. Photograph courtesy Bangor University

A clam dredged from icy Arctic waters is being hailed as the world’s longest-lived animal.

Climate researchers at Bangor University in the United Kingdom recently counted 405 annual growth rings in the shells of a quahog clam.

When this animal was young, Shakespeare was writing his greatest plays and the English were establishing their first settlements in the Americas.

The team plucked the mollusk from 262-feet-deep (80-meter-deep) waters off the northern coast of Iceland.

The team is studying growth lines in clam shells as part of a project to understand how the climate has changed over the past thousand years.

Full Article: National Geographic News

Diving under the Antarctic ice to get close to the much-feared leopard seal, photographer Paul Nicklen found an extraordinary new friend. Share his hilarious, passionate stories of the polar wonderlands, illustrated by glorious images of the animals who live on and under the ice.

The competition aims to get New Zealanders thinking of the reasons they love the water. Photo / Brett Phibbs

For Anna Paquin, it is her connection to home. For Lloyd Jones, it is a grand schemer and connector. And for Hollie Smith, a friend and enemy.

The ocean is the subject for a creative competition which already features contributions by prominent New Zealand figures.

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is drawing on their words, images and lyrics to spell out one of New Zealand’s great conservation problems – despite our love of the sea, less than 1 per cent of it is protected by law. This contrasts with 20 per cent of the country’s land that is part of the conservation estate.

New Zealand’s waters, 15 times larger than its landmass, are home to 80 per cent of its biodiversity, including unique species such as Hector’s and Maui dolphins. Yet government allocation of marine reserves continually falls behind goals set by the United Nations.

Read full article from The New Zealand Herald.