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: Mediterranean. 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.
44 articles
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Biotope · Environment
From above, a Posidonia meadow can look like a sweep of green leaves. A sea bream passes overhead, a wrasse slips between the blades and a red mullet probes the sand at the edge. Lower your gaze and a different set of…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Way of life · Behaviour
At the foot of a rock, open shells, bits of crab and a few stones lie outside a dark crack. A common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, might be tucked away at the back. It might have gone hunting or moved to another shelter.…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Way of life · Behaviour
A shoal of bogue flashes silver as it crosses the sand towards a rocky pinnacle. Suddenly the fish bunch up and turn almost as one. Several dentex have appeared at the edge of the blue. The shoal buckles as they close…
AvailableFree accessArticle region: Mediterranean
Biotope · Environment
An easterly wind has been blowing for two days. Waves throw long brown ribbons onto the beach, and by morning they have piled into a dark mat. The ribbons are leaves of Posidonia oceanica, a flowering plant that forms…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
Off Cyprus, a lionfish hangs beneath a rocky ledge. It spreads its striped fins and inches towards a smaller fish sheltering by the rock. The scene might look at home on a Red Sea reef. Here, though, the lionfish is…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Biotope · Environment
Sunlight flickers across the rock as the diver descends. Near the surface, the water feels pleasantly warm. A few metres lower, the cold catches the diver across the face and hands. Looking back up, there’s no obvious…
AvailableFree accessArticle region: Mediterranean
Biotope · Environment
A dive torch picks out white specks against the blue. Some look like flakes, others like threads. They sink, curl around rocks or lift in a passing current. A few may be grains kicked up from the seabed. Others carry…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Biotope · Natural history
The rock drops away beneath the diver’s fins. Purple fans rise from the wall, some tall enough to stand clear of their neighbours, others scarcely branched. Where the cliff turns, the fans face a different way. A sea fan…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
At the foot of a reef, ripples mark the sand. A goatfish stirs up a cloud of sediment and disappears among the corals. A sea cucumber moves so slowly you can barely see it crawl. Look at its mouth. Short tentacles pick…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
Off Malta, cameras have caught blue runners darting after prey in the sand stirred up by feeding rays. On Red Sea reefs, a shake of a grouper’s head can bring a moray out of its shelter. One fish takes advantage of…
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
Anatomy · Science
An eye is moving from one side of a young fish’s head to the other. Across the Atlantic drifts a transparent larva shaped like a leaf, still a long way from the familiar outline of an eel. And a tiny sea squirt larva…
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…
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
Ecology · Environment
A ship can come to rest on sand, maerl or rock, or land against a seagrass meadow. Its hull rises above the seabed, puts hard surfaces in the current and casts shadows. What happens to the wreck and the life around it…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
A ripple shifts. A trail disappears. Waves and currents are always rearranging a sandy seabed, and much of the life there stays out of sight. A burrow, a shell or a slight movement of sand can give away an animal you…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
A patch of pink and purple gravel on the seabed can turn out to be maerl. Hard red algae grow loose on the sediment. Their branches accumulate so slowly that a well-developed bed can represent decades or centuries of…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Biotope · Environment
From above, a Posidonia meadow can look like a sweep of green ribbons. Each shoot belongs to a flowering plant, and some meadows have been growing for centuries. Much of their history lies beneath the leaves, in the…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Biotope · Environment
In the dim light of the Mediterranean, hard crusts build up millimetre by millimetre. Over centuries, sometimes millennia, growth and erosion shape them into walls and platforms. These formations, known as coralligenous…
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…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Behaviour
A red scorpionfish can wait against the rocks until a small fish comes within reach. A common octopus can change colour and texture before moving off to search a crevice. In clear Mediterranean water, either animal can…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Mediterranean
Ecology · Science
Between Port-Cros and Porquerolles, a calm sea gives little away about what is moving beneath it. A sardine can take in plankton and pass some of that meal on to a tuna. Other material can drift past both fish towards…
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 restArticle region: Mediterranean
Anatomy · Science
A moray’s skin can look smooth, while a shark’s can be studded with structures that resemble tiny teeth. On a sole, the patterns can make the fish hard to pick out against the sand. To understand what those surfaces do,…
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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