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: Red Sea. 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.
39 articles
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
A lionfish off Cyprus spreads its pectoral fins as it approaches its prey. Its ancestors crossed into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, as did rabbitfish, cornetfish and pufferfish. Each species’ history shows…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A blue runner keeps close to a ray as it works the sand. On a Red Sea reef, a grouper signals to a moray before the two set out. In both cases, hunters come together. Their next move can tell you whether they’re taking…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Science
Life inside a tropical reef helps shape its carbonate framework and feed its predators. Some of the organisms responsible are small enough to live inside the coral skeleton itself.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Science
On a shallow reef, two fish in the same sunlight can receive different doses of ultraviolet radiation at skin level. Their mucus may absorb different wavelengths or amounts of UV. How much reaches their cells also…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restArticle region: Red Sea
Ecology · Science
A peak temperature gives only part of the picture. The temperatures a coral usually experiences and the length of a warm spell also shape the outcome. Comparing the Gulf of Aqaba with the central Red Sea helps show why.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Science
Snapping shrimp and calling fish shape the soundscape that larvae encounter as they approach a reef. Playback experiments test how those sounds affect different stages of recruitment, from moving towards a habitat to…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Science
A coral can lose its colour while its tissue is still alive. The change begins inside cells, where heat can disrupt the exchange of resources between the coral and its photosynthetic partners.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A moray can stay still in a crevice for a long time. Its jaws keep moving all the same. The mouth and throat pump water over the gills, and two small openings behind the head let it out again.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A draughtsboard shark can lie still with its eyes open and be asleep. To distinguish sleep from quiet wakefulness, researchers look for changes in how the shark responds, how it holds its body and how much oxygen it…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A clownfish can spend much of its life in contact with tentacles that still capture prey. One explanation lies in the chemistry of its skin mucus, which can affect whether the anemone’s stinging capsules discharge.
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
Crown-of-thorns sea stars are native to Indo-Pacific reefs. During an outbreak, they can remove living coral faster than surviving colonies grow and new ones establish, changing both coral cover and the mix of species.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
A night of mass spawning can bring eggs and sperm from many colonies into the same patch of water. For a new colony to form, a larva must then disperse, settle on a suitable surface and survive as a young polyp.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
Trace a grain from reef to beach and look for three processes along the way. Organisms build calcium carbonate structures, those structures break into fragments, and water carries the grains.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
Nassau groupers migrate to spawning sites, while corals release gametes from fixed colonies. In both cases, synchronisation can favour external fertilisation. Water movement then helps determine where eggs and larvae go.
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
An octopus learns to get past a stopper. A grouper signals above a crevice where its prey has vanished. Both behaviours can be observed directly. Working out what the animals know takes a closer look at the evidence.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
Two mandarinfish rise together to spawn. At a wrasse nest, rivals can approach while eggs are being laid. Who breeds with whom matters, and what happens after mating can still affect which eggs are fertilised and by…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A mussel’s shell, a shrimp’s escape and a seabed full of sand pose different problems for a hungry animal. Follow the food from where it starts to where digestion begins, including the particles a sea squirt picks out of…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A carcass on the seabed draws scavengers and the fish that hunt them. As its tissues break down, some of the material enters those animals, while some reaches the sediment or dissolves. Oxygen levels, microbial activity…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
An algal garden feeds a damselfish. A rock holds eggs only while they develop. An anemone can shelter a group of clownfish for much longer. The value of each resource helps explain how fish defend it.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A scorpionfish stays hidden until prey comes within reach. A brightly coloured nudibranch may be conspicuous enough to warn a predator away. An anemone can catch food without leaving its patch of seabed. To understand…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
Removing a parrotfish’s cocoon can reveal what it protects against. Recording activity in a zebrafish’s brain can reveal distinct sleep states. Each experiment answers a different question about what happens when fish…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
The loss of a dominant fish can change how another behaves within minutes. Its reproductive organs may take far longer to change. Four reef fish show how social cues, tissue remodelling and the advantages of size can…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
A frogfish’s lure can bring prey within reach of a mouth that opens in a fraction of a second. Whether the prey escapes depends on when it senses danger and how much time it has to react.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Natural history
Some marine animals disperse large numbers of eggs. Others invest more in each offspring. How the embryos develop, where currents carry them and when larvae find their first prey can all shape the odds of survival.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
As the light fades, the fish using a reef can change within hours. Farther offshore, zooplankton shift towards the surface. Their return to deeper water can carry carbon with them, linking a daily feeding trip to the…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Natural history
An injury can interrupt essential functions in seconds. For an animal that survives, the next challenge is to organise the remaining tissues into a body part that works.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
A passing wave can trigger flashes in plankton, a glowing lure can draw prey closer, and light from a fish’s belly can soften its outline. The effect of the light depends on how it is produced and what the animal seeing…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
A grouper pauses beside a cleaner wrasse. From that encounter alone, it can be hard to tell which fish benefits and how much. The same question applies to a goby sharing a burrow, a remora on a moving host and an isopod…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
A sea fan seems to move as one in the current. Look closer and you can see individual polyps extend or retract. The living tissue beneath them connects their digestive cavities and helps the colony grow.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Behaviour
A fish’s markings can signal to mates and rivals while affecting how easily predators detect it. On tropical reefs, the diversity of species and habitats gives rise to many combinations of colour and pattern.
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Biotope · Environment
A reef can take centuries to build, yet the processes shaping it are visible on a single dive. A polyp deposits carbonate, a grazer feeds on algae and a juvenile fish finds cover. Reefs in the Red Sea, the Maldives and…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Ecology · Natural history
The same seagrass meadow can produce food, hold sediment in place and supply debris to the seabed. Ecological roles describe how these processes connect and why their effects vary with local conditions. The examples are…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Miscellaneous · Natural history
Sponges, sea stars and anemones have very different body plans. Classifying animals into phyla helps explain where those differences come from and which features they share. Another way to read the same habitat is to…
AvailableFree accessMultiple marine regions
Way of life · Behaviour
From a distance, a school can seem to move as a single animal. It turns abruptly, tightens or spreads out as its members adjust to one another. That coordination starts with the information each fish gets from its…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
Holding depth, rising and sinking all take control. A **swim bladder** lets many bony fish regulate buoyancy by adjusting an internal supply of gas. Sharks and some bony fish, including bottom dwellers and strong…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
In clear water, a fish may see a neighbour turn. In murky water, the movement it leaves behind can still provide a clue. The lateral line picks up nearby disturbances, alongside the information fish get from sight,…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
A passing fish disturbs the water around it. So can a predator, prey or a current flowing around a rock. The lateral line detects these mechanical disturbances close to the body. It adds to the information a fish gets…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Anatomy · Science
As sunlight travels through water, some wavelengths fade faster than others. The eyes of fish differ in the way they gather light, focus it and detect colour. Those differences shape what each species can see as it…
Available1/3 public · licence required for the restMultiple marine regions
Miscellaneous · Technique
Some divers return from an underwater landscape with questions about the species they saw, the behaviour they noticed and the habitat they explored. **Naturalist diving** and **diving focused on marine biology** share…
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