Observe · understand · progress
What is hidden in the sand, around a wreck or among the algae? Dive.Explo360 articles build on your underwater observations to help you understand marine habitats, species’ ways of life and their relationships within ecosystems.
Develop your knowledge of marine life while diving: discover the features of different environments, learn to observe their inhabitants and connect your discoveries with the marine species guides and the dive videos. These readings accompany divers and anyone curious about underwater life, before or after exploring.
Your marine region: Maldives. Choose a marine region, then search for a subject or filter articles by category and topic. Each publication shows its availability and access conditions.
Region labels show where the topic applies. Articles that cover several seas may use tropical examples, even in the Mediterranean catalogue.
38 articles
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Science
Picture a branching coral on a tropical reef. Damselfish shelter between its branches. A wrasse swims through, and a shrimp slips into a crack. A diver might stop to look at the fish and the living polyps, then swim on.…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Science
A bluestreak cleaner wrasse leaves its station and swims through a shaft of sunlight. Nearby, damselfish hold their territories above the reef. In such clear water, some of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation travels far…
AvailableFree accessArticle region: Maldives
Ecology · Science
Water rushes through the reef pass. Above the drop-off, hundreds of fusiliers tighten into a school. Jacks sweep along the reef and vanish into the blue. Farther on, grey reef sharks swim into the current, barely moving…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Science
At dusk, fish vanish into cracks and coral polyps extend their tentacles. Drop a hydrophone beside the reef and another shift becomes audible. Snaps come thick and fast from the rubble, with low pulses and bursts of…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Science
Picture two coral colonies a few centimetres apart. One has brown and golden branches covered in tiny polyps. The other is white. Its polyps may still be alive and catching prey, even though they have lost much of the…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
At the entrance to a reef crevice, a moray can lie almost entirely out of sight. Its jaws part, the pointed teeth show, and the throat moves. Then the jaws close and the whole sequence begins again. That steady rhythm…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
Picture a shark lying on the sand at the back of a cave, pectoral fins spread and tail still. Its gill slits open and close in a steady rhythm. Its eyes are open. It could still be asleep. Out in the blue, a shark that…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A clownfish pauses at the edge of an anemone, brushes a tentacle and backs away. A moment later it is among the tentacles, out of sight. Those same tentacles can immobilise a shrimp, yet the fish can spend the night…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
As a crown-of-thorns sea star works its way over a coral colony, its arms grip the branches. The meal takes place out of sight. Beneath the sea star, part of its stomach spreads over the living coral. When the animal…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Maldives
Way of life · Behaviour
A manta glides over a coral outcrop and turns back into the current. Small fish rise from the reef towards its fins. The ray makes another pass, slow enough for the cleaners to approach. A photograph of its spotted…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A few nights after a full moon on the Great Barrier Reef, pink bundles appear at the mouths of coral polyps. They hang briefly, then rise. Nearby colonies release bundles of their own, and the surface water begins to…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
A dazzling white beach, coconut palms leaning over a lagoon and turquoise water clear enough to see the seabed. In the Maldives, the Seychelles or the Pacific atolls, the scene can look timeless. Yet some of the grains…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A Nassau grouper approaches the edge of a Caribbean reef. Others arrive from different directions, some after travelling tens of kilometres. The fish may stay together for days before a small group breaks away at dusk…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A crab moves behind the glass of a sealed jar, within sight of an octopus but out of reach. On a Red Sea reef, a grouper can break off a chase to seek out a moray. Off Indonesia, another octopus carries coconut shells…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A flash of colour can be part of courtship or a warning to a rival. Around a wrasse’s nest, two males may vie for access while another waits for a chance to slip in. In some species, the female inspects several…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A mussel can clamp its shell shut with powerful muscles. A sea star needs only a sliver of space between the valves to begin its meal. A fish chasing a crustacean has a different problem: the prey can dart away before…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
In an experiment in the deep Atlantic, fish arrived at a dead cetacean within about an hour. They were catching the small crustaceans that had gathered to feed. Long after the last scavenger leaves a carcass, some of its…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A fish only a few centimetres long can drive off an intruder three times its size. A short chase may be all it takes. Elsewhere on the reef, a dispute can cost a whole group its shelter. What makes a patch of rock, a…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A scorpionfish can disappear against the rocks. A brightly coloured nudibranch moves slowly in full view, and an anemone waits with its tentacles spread. The chemistry behind those encounters becomes visible in what…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A parrotfish spends the night in a transparent cocoon. Sharks lie still on the seabed. In the brain of a tiny zebrafish, waves of activity can spread during sleep. Each offers a different clue to what happens when fish…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
When a dominant bluehead wrasse disappears, a large female can take over his territory. Within days, she may be producing sperm. A clownfish can change in the opposite direction, and a small reef goby can change back…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A frogfish can wait on the seabed with only its lure moving. When another fish comes close enough, the mouth opens and the water does the rest. Elsewhere, a sailfish can sweep its bill through a school or a grouper can…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
An egg drifts with the current. A transparent larva crosses open water. A young fish searches for shelter. Some marine animals release millions of offspring, while others spend weeks guarding a handful. What makes such…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
At dusk, fish that fed in the open begin to tuck themselves into the reef. Others leave the crevices where they spent the day. Farther offshore, billions of small animals start swimming towards the surface. A night dive…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Natural history
A sea star survives a bite but loses an arm. An octopus can lose part of an arm as it pulls free of a predator. Some sea cucumbers respond to a threat by expelling internal organs. Escaping is only the first hurdle. The…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
Picture a wave breaking after dark. Blue sparks run along the foam, fade, then return with the next wave. The light comes from living things, some too small to see individually. Below the reach of sunlight, a glow can…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
On an Indian Ocean reef, a grouper can come to a stop in front of a fish striped in blue and black and open its jaws. The little fish moves closer. A grouper can swallow prey much bigger than this visitor. Yet a cleaner…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
A sea fan holds its polyps out in the current. On a branch of red coral, white tentacles form little crowns against the red. Each crown surrounds a mouth that can take in food. The tissue below links those mouths to the…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Behaviour
On a tropical dive, a flash of yellow, blue or orange can catch your eye against brown or beige coral. To another fish, the same colours might identify a potential mate or a territorial rival. With so many species…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
A grazer scrapes a hard surface beside a coral colony. A few centimetres away, a fish disappears into a crack. Both are using a structure that grew as generations of polyps left their skeletons behind. From the Red Sea…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
Some fish feed on seagrass leaves. Others shelter among them. Even leaves that fall to the seabed can feed other organisms. Ecological roles help trace those connections, in a meadow, on a reef or out in open water. The…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Miscellaneous · Natural history
If you’ve taken a marine biology course for divers, you may remember the table of phyla. It came with unfamiliar names and an evolutionary timeline, and it was easy to forget as soon as you’d learnt it. Start instead…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A school can turn, tighten or stretch out as it moves. Each fish adjusts to what it sees and senses nearby, and those adjustments keep the group together. How does a change made by one fish become a movement shared by…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
A fish can hang above a Mediterranean reef with barely a stroke of its fins. In many bony fish, a pocket of gas inside the body makes that possible. The swim bladder saves effort at a steady depth, but what happens to…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
In murky water, a fish can lose sight of its prey before losing track of it. A disturbance nearby may register along its lateral line, and dissolved molecules can carry information about what passed. Which cue matters…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
A passing animal leaves a trace in the water that a fish can detect before it sees what moved. The lateral line picks up nearby flows and vibrations, adding information to what the fish learns through sight, hearing,…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
Switch on a torch underwater and colours can appear that were hard to make out a moment earlier. A fish looking at the same patch of reef has its own set of limits, set by the light and the structure of its eyes. Vision…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Miscellaneous · Technique
A dive can begin with the simple pleasure of being underwater. Then a sponge or a fish catches your eye and you start asking questions. What lives here? What is it doing? How does it fit into the habitat? For some…
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