This edited article about the moray eel originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 191 published on 11 September 1965.

Moray eel

Down through the watery, green gloom of a tropical sea plunges the lithe form of a diver . . . down into a submerged world glowing with strange-coloured corals and swaying weeds. Small fishes brush past him as he glides through the miniature, underwater jungle, a stream of silvered air-bubbles in his wake. . . .

Without warning, from a dark opening in the reef ahead, a terrifying head appears. Rows of needle-sharp teeth gape in a powerful jaw. Black eyes glint viciously. A thick neck extends and contracts rhythmically. Inch by inch, the writhing form of a moray eel emerges from the hole. . . .

The diver gives a quick thrust with his feet and is gone upwards, churning the waters blindly in his haste to reach the safety of the surface and his boat again. . . .

Nothing sends a diver quicker to the surface than the appearance of a moray eel. This sinister, panther-like serpent can inflict powerful wounds upon the hands or feet of a laggardly diver. Its hooked teeth are made to grip and hang on to its prey, while its actual bite can set up bad infections.

The moray dwells chiefly in the coral reefs of Pacific waters from the Indian Ocean to Hawaii, although some types do exist in the Mediterranean sea. In the Pacific, only the shark is more feared than this member of the Muraenidae eel family.

Its appearance is truly that of a monster from the deep. Measuring from three up to ten feet long in body, the wide jaws of its head open and shut constantly to display its teeth as it moves in search of prey among small fish. The stretching and contracting of its neck add to its ferocious look – although this in fact is the mechanism by which it breathes.

The contractions of neck and jaw pump water into the moray’s system for the extraction of oxygen for its breathing process. The water is pumped out again through uncovered gill-holes in its head.

The long, snake-like body of the moray has a ridge of fin along the spine which flickers like a fringe as the creature darts in and out of the dark holes which are its lair. Tough and scaleless, its skin can be mottled, striped or speckled. Most morays are yellow and black, but some species have variegated colours which give them a natural camouflage among the plants of coral reefs.

These supple eels can be caught with pots, lines or harpoons, but they seldom come out of their holes when attacked, preferring to withdraw into the darkness.

An angry moray on the rampage is something with which to reckon, however. Fishermen who have captured such an eel which has then broken loose in their boat have been known to leap overboard rather than stay with the threshing, infuriated creature.

The Romans found the flesh of the moray tender and good to eat, according to records of their well-stocked fishponds. Unfortunately, they knew that this delicacy also found human beings tasty, and many a slave is supposed to have been threatened with death in the eel pond until Caesar Augustus put a stop to any such practice.

This edited article about birds originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 166 published on 20 March 1965.

Osprey with fish

High above the water circles the osprey, master fisherman of the birds of prey. Suddenly, as his next meal glints in the water far below, his wings close and he rockets down, striking the sea with a resounding splash which entirely conceals him as he sinks his sharp talons into the doomed fish.

Coming up again the handsome, two-foot long bird holds the fish head foremost. If it is not too big he eats it in flight; otherwise he takes it to his favourite perch.

Any fisherman’s life is a tough one, and the osprey is no exception. If he has wrongly judged the fish he has attacked and picked one that is too big he can be drawn under water and drowned. For his roughly scaled feet with their long, sharp, curved claws, are traps from which no fish can escape, and the osprey will not let go once he has sunk them into his prey.

Sometimes called the fishing-hawk, the majestic osprey is an eagle-sized, sharp-billed bird that makes its home in tropical and temperate regions of the world. Although it prefers coastal waters it is also found along the edges of rivers and lakes.

Like many other birds of prey ospreys seem to develop a real affection for one locality, to which they will return year after year.

The nest they build is indeed a wonder of nature. Both male and female take part in the building, and in America the chosen site is usually a tree, often a dead one, while in Europe a cliff edge, or even a ruined building, will suffice if necessary.

Because the birds return each year to the same site and add to the nest it becomes bigger and bigger until it is a huge, ramshackle bundle of sticks perhaps six feet deep and five to six feet wide.

During this time the “lodgers” have moved in.

Most frequent of these in the American-based osprey’s roomy “apartment” is a pair of black-crowned night herons, who move in and build their nest within the ospreys’, a foot or two under the main section.

The night herons know that this site gives them a double-edged benefit. Firstly, they have an extra roof over their heads without the labour of having to build it, and secondly the fierce ospreys, who have no natural enemies except for man, keep away other predatory birds by their presence on the “top floor.”

The night herons might be joined by a pair of purple grackles, wrens or sparrows. They burrow into the side of the pile of sticks virtually under the beaks of the ospreys, who pay no attention to their guests.

For them there is a third benefit in store. When the ospreys leave their “lodgers” forage in their nest for any tit-bits left over from the osprey’s meals.

The osprey lays two or three, or rarely, four, brown splotched eggs which are incubated mostly by the female. The nestlings are born after five weeks, and for the seven weeks after that the role of father osprey as fisherman to his family becomes an arduous one.

The male and the female birds have similar plumage, with the lower parts, neck and head chiefly white and the back and long pointed wings chiefly dark brown. The chest is marked with a pale brown band and the head is usually ornamented with a short crest. The female is slightly larger than the male – she being about two feet long and he being about twenty inches.

Ospreys are wonderfully graceful birds to watch in flight, with extensive soaring and wheeling on wings that are slightly crooked.

Unhappily, the chances of seeing them in Britain are extremely remote. In the last century they were frequent visitors to Scotland until hunters drove them away.

This edited article about hibernation originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 152 published on 12 December 1964.

A cutaway landscape showing hibernating animals by David Nockels

During the cold winter months you will sometimes find butterflies and moths hidden away behind curtains and pictures or in corners of rooms that are little used. They look quite dead, but if you move them carefully to some place that is warm you will see them gradually fluttering back into life.

In the same way, you may find a hedgehog buried in the leaves at the bottom of a ditch or rolled up in a ball under a garden shed. If you have a pet tortoise it will disappear in winter – unless you come across it in some sheltered spot drawn into its shell and to all appearance lifeless.

These are only a few of the many creatures who escape the cold of winter and manage without food by going into the deep sleep called hibernation.

The term “hibernation” comes from the Latin word hibernatus, meaning “winter quarters.” And that is exactly what hibernating creatures do: they go into winter quarters and sleep soundly until spring brings warmth again.

In countries of northern and western Europe and North America many animals find their supply of food cut off in winter and would starve. So they go into a long deep slumber, and keep themselves alive on the fat that has accumulated in their bodies when they were able to feed in the summer and autumn.

Unlike the birds, which can fly for thousands of miles to warmer lands where food is plentiful, most animals cannot travel long distances to places in search of food.

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This edited article about the seahorse originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 150 published on 28 November 1964.

Seahorses

Of all the fish in the world’s oceans none is more odd than the seahorse.

It does not even look like a fish and it seldom swims, neither does it have scales or a skeleton. Its body is covered with a hard skin rather like an insect.

The sea-horse’s method of breathing is also different from that of other fish. Instead of the comb-like gills with which most fish extract oxygen from the water, it has curious tuft-like breathing organs.

There are several species of sea-horse. Some are found as far north as the English Channel, but they are more common in tropical water.

The warmer the climate, the larger the species. Those found in the English Channel are seldom more than a couple of inches long, but in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of Japan there are specimens that grow to a length of two feet.

But whatever their species or size, these strange creatures, called by scientists hippocampi, all justify their popular name of sea-horse.

Their head closely resembles that of a horse – or even more the knight in a set of chessmen. Their skin from the neck to the lower end of the body is in the form of a series of rings overlapping each other like tiles on a roof.

Again quite unlike other fish, they do not swim in a horizontal position, but upright as though standing on end.

Most fish use their tail when swimming, but the sea-horse does not. In fact its tail performs the function of a limb, being used for gripping a plant or other fixed object, round which it curves itself like a spiral.

The sea-horse is very poorly equipped for swimming. The fins that are normally found in pairs on fish, hardly exist on the sea-horse and are far too small to be of any real use in swimming. All they do is to help keep the strange creature balanced in its upright position.

The only really useful fin it possesses is the dorsal. This is the one on the centre of the back.

When the sea-horse wants to move, it releases its tail from its anchorage and slowly floats away with its dorsal fin vibrating to propel it along.

But it does not often move. Firmly hooked to seaweed or some other underwater object, it is quite content to spend most of its life almost motionless in the upright position, patiently waiting for the little shrimps and sea worms on which it feeds to float past.

But although it hardly seems to be alive, the sea-horse is keeping a sharp look out with its keen eyes. These are placed on either side of the head and are quite independent of each other, so that it can keep a wary look out from both sides of its head.

As soon as a shrimp comes within striking distance, the snout shoots out and the jaws open to snap up the victim.

This edited article about the manatee originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 146 published on 31 October 1964.

Mermaid or manatee?

When nature designed the manatee she was not quite sure whether it was going to be a fish or a land-living animal. For although this queer creature spends all its life in the water it feeds by browsing on vegetation.

At one time zoologists thought it was a close but small relative of the whale. It has a fish-shaped body, forelimbs like paddles and the flat, horizontal tail of the whale.

But there the resemblance ends. The manatee has teeth, whereas the whale has none. It does not blow like a whale, but comes to the surface of the water to breathe just as a land animal would do. And even more unlike whales, it is not a deep-sea creature, seldom venturing far from the coast or the mouths of rivers.

Actually, the creature is closely-related to herbivorous (plant-eating) land animals such as the cow. It is thought that the ancestors of the manatee were land animals which through millions of years became specially adapted for feeding on underwater vegetation.

When the manatee periodically raises its head out of the water to breathe, it has a strangely human appearance. This probably gave rise to the legend of the mermaid. For that reason its Latin zoological name is Sirenia, from the Latin word, sirene, meaning “sea nymph.”

There are three species. One is native to South America, one to North America, and the third to the coast of West Africa. No adult species is more than eight feet long and all have a smooth, hairless skin.

The forelimbs or flippers are oval shaped and have three nails at the tips.

Manatees’ mouths are specially designed for cutting great swathes of underwater vegetation.

The upper lip consists of two bristly pads by means of which the weed is sucked into the mouth, where it is squeezed and pressed by horny plates on the palate. The process of chewing is helped by eleven pairs of cheek teeth in each jaw.

These teeth are constantly being renewed. They are arranged in such a way that as the front ones are shed their places are filled by teeth from behind. As the first teeth are used up before the last of the series has fully developed, only six teeth are functioning at the same time.

Manatees eat such enormous quantities of water weeds that in 1962 their appetites were exploited to clear thick growths of weeds which were choking the drainage ditches and canals in Georgetown, British Guiana.

A force of 70 of the animals was taken on the strength of the British Guiana Department of Drainage and Irrigation. When they were put to work in a badly-choked canal they relentlessly cut a swathe through the vegetation, so enabling the water to flow more freely.

When they reached the end of the canal the vegetation had grown again behind them. So the manatees turned and mowed it down again.

Travelling backwards and forwards along the canals, the aquatic lawnmowers can in a few hours clear an amount of weeds which it would take a gang of men several days to do. On one occasion two large ponds each covering an area of nearly 4,000 square yards and hopelessly choked with water weeds were cleared by three industrious manatees in a week.

Incidentally, the British Guiana manatees are the first marine animals that have been successfully domesticated by man and made to work for him.

This edited article about beetles originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 144 published on 17 October 1964.

There are about 250,000 different kinds of beetle, ranging in size from the giant Hercules of the tropics, six inches long, to midgets which can just be seen without a microscope. Some are colourful and harmless, others are ugly and poisonous.

One of the least pleasant, but certainly the most interesting, of the beetle tribe is the Giant Fish-killer, or Lethocerus indicus.

Largest of all water beetles, it is four inches long, oval in shape, and of a dirty brown colour. It is found in India and the Far East, and is quite common in the southern states of the U.S.A.

Like all water beetles, its wings are not stiff and horny where they join the body, and the antennae or feelers can be drawn into cavities on either side of the head. It is a relentless killer and devours an enormous number of pond and river creatures. It is an expert swimmer both under and on the surface of the water and spends most of its time hunting and eating small fish and frogs.

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This edited article about oarfish originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 143 published on 10 October 1964.

Banks’s ribbon fish

For centuries sailors have come ashore with stories of giant serpents which they claimed to have sighted when far out at sea. No one has yet caught a sea serpent and all manner of theories have been put forward to account for its existence.

Many of the stories describe the sea serpent as having a long, snake-like body and the head of a horse with a red, fiery mane.

That description fits the oarfish, and most scientists who have tried to solve the mystery now believe that stories of sea serpents have originated with sightings of oarfish making their rare appearances on the surface of the water.

Sometimes called the ribbon fish because of its long, ribbon-like body, the oarfish belongs to a group of marine creatures called by zoologists regalecus. It lives deep in the ocean depths and most of the specimens of it that have been seen were either floating dead on the surface of the sea or had been washed ashore in storms.

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This edited article about the Moray eel originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 801 published on 21st May 1977.

Moray eel

Down through the watery, green gloom of a tropical sea plunges the lithe form of a diver . . . down into a sub-merged world glowing with strange coloured corals and swaying weeds. Small fishes brush past him as he glides through the water, a stream of silvered air-bubbles in his wake.

Without warning, from a dark opening in the reef ahead, a terrifying head appears. Rows of needle-sharp teeth gape in a powerful jaw. Black eyes glint viciously. A thick neck extends and contracts rhythmically. Slowly, the writhing form of a moray eel emerges from the hole. . . .

The diver gives a quick thrust with his feet and is gone upwards, churning the waters blindly in his haste to reach the safety of the surface and his boat again. . . .

Nothing sends a diver quicker to the surface than the appearance of a moray eel. This sinister, panther-like serpent can inflict powerful wounds upon the hands or feet of a laggardly diver. Its hooked teeth are made to grip and hang on to its prey, while its actual bite can set up bad infections.

The moray dwells chiefly in the coral reefs of Pacific waters from the Indian Ocean to Hawaii, although some types do exist in the Mediterranean sea. In the Pacific, only the shark is more feared than this member of the Muraenidae eel family.

Its appearance is truly that of a monster from the deep. Measuring up to 10 feet (3 metres) long in body, the wide jaws of its head open and shut constantly to display its teeth as it moves in search of prey among small fish. The stretching and contracting of its neck add to its ferocious look – although this in fact is the mechanism by which it breathes.

The contractions of neck and jaw pump water into the moray’s system for the extraction of oxygen for its breathing process. The water is pumped out again through uncovered gill-holes in its head.

The long, snake-like body of the moray has a ridge of fin along the spine which flickers like a fringe as the creature darts in and out of the dark holes which are its lair. Tough and scaleless, its skin can be mottled, striped or speckled. Most morays are yellow and black, but some species have variegated colours which give them a natural camouflage among the plants of coral reefs.

The moray eel will attack anything and anybody for no other reason than it is an aggressive and bad tempered creature.

An angry moray on the rampage is something with which to reckon. Fishermen who have captured such an eel which has then broken loose in their boat have been known to leap over-board rather than stay with the threshing, infuriated creature.
The Romans found the flesh of the moray tender and good to eat, according to records of their well-stocked fishponds. Unfortunately, they knew that this delicacy also found human beings tasty, and many a slave is supposed to have been threatened with death in the eel-pond until Caesar Augustus put a stop to any such practice.

This edited article about oil originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 801 published on 21st May 1977.

Oil rig

One hundred miles east of the Shetlands, the riggers on the Beryl oil platform were startled to see West German trawlers straying into the 500-metre safety zone around their North Sea station. Their alarm was well justified. Soon afterwards, the trawls from the invading fleet cut a vital power line and a well, producing 6,300 barrels of oil a day – a fortune in black gold – had to be shut down.

Frantic radio messages alerted the Ministry of Defence in London and a Royal Navy patrol vessel was ordered to the spot. But by the time she arrived all the foreign trawlers had vanished.

The incident, which cost the Mobil oil company around £2 million, happened last December during a crop of violations of oil rig safety regulations. Frequently, oilmen reported that Polish and East German vessels were sailing too close to some of the rigs that stand above Britain’s vast energy resources. Russian trawlers, decks bristling with strange electronic gadgets that monitor rig-to-shore communications, were also sighted around the rigs.

Perhaps it is remarkable that so far no major disaster has occurred, for the men aboard the oil drilling platforms undertake one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. Yet the toll of life and limb remains a sombre one: since 1971 more than 30 divers have been killed while working on the bottom beneath the rigs Some 200 of their colleagues manning the platforms themselves have been injured in accidents.

The rigs, where about 5,000 men live, are built to withstand winds of up to 160 kilometres an hour and waves 20 metres high. In what is regarded by hardened seamen as the most dangerous stretch of water in the world, these conditions are not unknown when vicious Atlantic storms sweep down from the icy north.

The British Medical Association estimate the death rate among North Sea oil riggers to be 50 times greater than in normal factory working and 10 times greater than in coalmining. The lure of high pay, however, ensures there is no shortage of recruits for this perilous job, which offers up to £300 a week.

Certainly there should be plenty of opportunity for employment in the next few years with the urgent need to produce more and more oil and gas. One North Sea zone earmarked for major development is the Ninian field which can tap about 1,000 million barrels of oil and lies beneath 200 metres of water some 190 kilometres east of the Shetlands. About £1,100 million will be spent over eight years to develop this potentially valuable area. Two huge production platforms are to be set on the seabed and connected by pipeline to a Shetlands terminal, which will handle oil extracted from 84 wells.

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This edited article about molluscs and crustaceans originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 792 published on 19th March 1977.

Assorted sea shells

Most of the sea’s wonders are hidden from the eyes of all but the most daring of deep sea divers. But there are marvels to be seen. These are the shells which lie upon the shores in a great variety of shapes and sizes, from the tiny to the very big.

Most of the bigger ones are found only in tropical countries but it is still possible to begin a really interesting collection during a week’s holiday in Britain.

The shells are the homes of molluscs – soft-bodied animals that need to protect their body. They do this by forming a shell from the lime in the water, and staying in it permanently. As they grow, so does the shell.

In the main the shells are of two types – a single shell twisted round itself into a coiled, conical shape, and a double shell hinged on one side.

The best known of the double-shell types – bivalves, as they are called – are mussels and oysters, which are “farmed” for their edible flesh. Oysters and mussels are fairly easy to cultivate, for not only do they cling to one spot all their lives but they lay millions of eggs in a single year.

They are bred in special basins of shallow water which have plenty of rocks for them to cling to. Alternatively the oyster farmers lower thick ropes to the bottom which can be raised when the tiny babies have attached themselves and become fully grown.

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