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The Hōkūleʻa is a double hulled voyaging canoe built as a replica of the canoes that ancient Polynesians used to sail to Hawaiʻi. The Hōkūleʻa completed an amazing trip across the Pacific Ocean in 1976 without the use of modern instruments to and from Tahiti. Hōkūleʻa embarked on a trip around the world in June 2013 to share the importance of traditional knowledge, sustainability, and environmental conservation.

If you had to guess what the most abundant organism in the ocean was, would you guess microorganisms? There are about 1 billion cells of bacteria in every liter of seawater. Marine viruses, which generally attack other microscopic organisms, are even more abundant, with about 10 billion in one liter of seawater. Most bacteria and viruses in the ocean are not harmful to humans.

Nudibranchs are a type of sea slug whose name means “naked gill” and they have some crazy ways of living. They come in many shapes and colors and can be found both in reefs and sandy ocean floors. One kind of nudibranch can eat a toxic sponge and store the poison in its own body, giving it a new defense mechanism. Another type farms algae within its body and uses the algae to make food for itself from the sun.

Despite their misleading name, sea cucumbers are not vegetables of any kind. These slow moving, soft bodied relatives of starfish and sea urchins live on the sea floor eating organic particles and microscopic marine animals. Sea cucumbers are important animals on coral reefs because they help remove dead material from ocean sediments.