<p>A pod of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/orca">orcas</a> hunts off the Norwegian coast. Orcas are specialist predators: They have finely-tuned strategies for hunting specific prey, like herring, which means they don't cope well with environmental change.</p>
A pod of orcas hunts off the Norwegian coast. Orcas are specialist predators: They have finely-tuned strategies for hunting specific prey, like herring, which means they don't cope well with environmental change.
Photograph by Paul Nicklen, Nat Geo Image Collection
Climate change and overfishing have rocked life in the ocean—but some species fare better than others.
ByNatasha Daly
Published April 4, 2019
• 4 min read
Traditionally, the ocean wasn’t all that hostile of a place to live. The species that make the ocean their home have evolved over millennia to thrive in its depths.
What seems mind-boggling to us—a fish’s ability to live five miles under the sea, for instance—is just life for other animals. “That environment’s not hostile to them—its like us being in our living rooms,” says Matthew Savoca, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, in Monterey.
Swimming around with up to six male fish permanently fused to her body, for example, is just a normal part of life for a female anglerfish. A male digs his teeth into a female and every one of his organs, except his
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Japan poised to release nuclear wastewater into the Pacific
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