Fish & Sea Life Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which flattened, superbly camouflaged Australian shark lies motionless on the reef looking like a weed-crusted rock, its outline broken up by a fringe of skin tassels around its mouth, waiting to snap up any fish or octopus that wanders too close?

Question 2

Which large fish has a long, flat bill that it swings sideways to slash and stun prey in a school, and special heater tissue beside its eyes that keeps its eyes and brain warm during deep dives into cold water, sharpening its vision?

Question 3

Which freshwater dolphin of a great Asian river was declared functionally extinct in 2007 after a six-week survey found not a single one, making it the first dolphin species driven to extinction by human activity?

Question 4

Which snake-bodied predator lurks in reef crevices with only its head showing, mouth opening and closing to pump water over its gills in what looks like a threat, and seizes prey with a second set of jaws that shoot forward from its throat to drag the catch down its gullet?

Question 5

What is the name for the deep-sea hot springs found along the mid-ocean ridges, where water superheated in the crust gushes out dark with dissolved minerals and supports dense life that runs not on sunlight but on bacteria harvesting energy from the chemicals?

Question 6

Which fast, torpedo-shaped open-ocean fish keeps parts of its body several degrees warmer than the surrounding sea, using a heat exchanger in its blood supply, and must swim non-stop with its mouth open to keep water flowing over its gills?

Question 7

What is the name for the sense by which a dolphin or a sperm whale builds a detailed picture of its surroundings and prey in dark or murky water, sending out streams of clicks, focusing them through a fatty forehead organ, and reading the echoes through its lower jaw?

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About Fish & Sea Life

This quiz is about life in the sea: the fish everyone knows and the ones almost nobody does, how a fish is built and how it lives, the sharks and rays, the whales, dolphins and seals, the octopus and its kin, the jellyfish and corals, the drifting plankton that feed the whole ocean, and the fisheries and reefs now under strain. One hundred questions in five packs, each describing a sea creature, a group, an adaptation, a record or a conservation story and asking you to name it from four choices of the same kind, then explaining it. Seabirds belong to the Birds quiz and sea turtles to a later one; this is a knowledge quiz, not a picture quiz.

The first pack is the famous inhabitants: the great white and whale sharks, the blue whale, the orca and the bottlenose dolphin, the giant Pacific octopus and the giant squid, the clownfish and the seahorse, the electric eel, the piranha, the anglerfish and the pufferfish, the manta ray and the moray eel, the living-fossil coelacanth, the Portuguese man o' war, the coral polyp, the sea star and the horseshoe crab.

The second pack is how fish work: the swim bladder, the countercurrent gill, the lateral line, the cartilaginous fish, the shark's electric sense, the jawless lamprey and hagfish, the heavyweight sunfish and the ribbon-like oarfish, schooling and countershading, the salmon and the tuna and the swordfish, the flying fish, the mudskipper and the lungfish, bioluminescence, the hitch-hiking remora and the cleaner wrasse.

The third pack is sharks and rays: the tiger, bull, hammerhead, mako, basking, Greenland, thresher, goblin and cookiecutter sharks, the sawfish, stingray, electric ray, skate and eagle ray, the nurse shark, the wobbegong and the walking epaulette shark, shark finning, dermal denticles and the spiracles.

The fourth pack is marine mammals: the sperm and humpback whales, the narwhal and beluga, baleen, the dugong and manatee and the extinct Steller's sea cow, the walrus, the elephant, leopard and crabeater seals, the sea otter, the vaquita and the baiji and the boto, echolocation, the blowhole, ambergris and krill.

The fifth pack is invertebrates, plankton and the wider ocean: the octopus, cuttlefish and chambered nautilus, the mimic octopus, the colossal squid, the box, immortal and lion's mane jellyfish, coral bleaching and the zooxanthellae, the crown-of-thorns starfish, hydrothermal vents and the giant tube worm, phytoplankton and diatoms, the daily vertical migration, kelp forests, the Grand Banks cod collapse, bycatch and the mantis shrimp.

The wrong answers are always other sea creatures or ocean terms of the same kind. About a quarter of the questions carry a neutral photograph of open water, a kelp stand or a fishing net, chosen because it names no species and so cannot point to any option. Facts have been checked against standard reference works.