Microworlds: Fiercest Ocean Predators

Plankton stick, sting, sense, and sneak to keep their bellies full. See how these ferocious creatures find food in a vast ocean.

Hey, teachers! Here’s a cheat sheet of what’s included in this episode of Microworlds:
- Plankton, zooplankton
- Capturing and eating food, sensing and responding
- Physical and behavioral adaptations to environments
- Life stages
- Parasitism, parasites and hosts, predators and prey,
- Comb jellies, amphipods, arrow worms, copepods, sea angels (sea slug), sea butterflies (sea snail)

We post our plankton finds on iNaturalist, an online community science platform for discovering, sharing, and learning about nature observations. Here are some of the organisms featured in this episode:
- Hyperiid amphipod on a comb jelly; Hyperoche medusarum, for example, is one of the parasitic species
- Comb jelly (Ctenophore)
- Arrow worm (Chaetognath)
- Sea angel (Clione limacina)
- Sea butterfly (Limacina helicina)

Find more of our plankton records and other biodiversity finds here: https://inaturalist.ca/people/HakaiInstitute

This episode is part of our series Microworlds, where we shrink down and discover the wonderful lives of the tiny, the miniature, the microworlds.

Produced by Josh Silberg and Meigan Henry
Written by Josh Silberg
Edited by Bennett Whitnell
Videography by Bennett Whitnell and Grant Callegari
Voice-over by Kristina Blanchflower
Microscopy/Scientific team: Alana Closs, Noriko Okamoto, Tyrel Froese, Faye Manning, and Kyle Hall
Additional footage by Tavish Campbell and Storyblocks