LARGEST Ocean Creatures

By : Epic Wildlife - 11 months ago
From jellyfish with crazy long tentacles too the single biggest animals on the planet, here’s the largest creatures you can find in the ocean.

Subscribe to Epic Wildlife

Let's Connect

Great White Shark

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood creatures ever, the great white shark doesn’t deserve the fearsome reputation that it's gotten largely through famous movies like Jaws. It's true that they are responsible for up to half of all shark attacks annually but these aren’t typically fatal. And research is starting to show that most great white attacks are actually a result of curiosity. They are inquisitive creatures, experts say, who are sample biting these victims and releasing them, not mindlessly attacking humans as has so often been portrayed. But it's easy to see why Hollywood and fanciful imaginations are quick to latch onto the great white as a source of terror and fear. They are the largest predatory fish in Earth’s oceans. While they average fifteen feet in length, specimens have been fished out of the sea exceeding 20 feet and weighing over five thousand pounds. They’re also built for speed, with powerful tails that can either propel them through the water at up to 15 miles per hour or allow them to leap clear out of the ocean when striking half submerged prey from below.

Giant Oceanic Manta Ray

Growing up to 23 feet in disc size and weighing nearly 3 thousand pounds in extreme cases, these are the largest type of rays in the world. Though it has very few natural predators it does occasionally run into a hungry great hammerhead shark or killer whale looking for an exotic meal. In these scenarios the giant oceanic manta ray has amazing escape speed that allows it to get away from even the quickest sharks. It's often not nearly quick enough as the majority of adults examined have at least one scar from a shark attack. Traditional Chinese medicines have fabricated the medicinal virtues of the animals gill rakers (reyker). This has led to a significant boost in their demand and as a result they are a vulnerable species.

Greenland Shark

Found mostly in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, the Greenland shark lives deep underwater. It's meat contains an organic compound that makes it toxic. Despite this their flesh is consumed as a delicacy in Iceland, after being treated to reduce its toxin levels of course. That’s all good stuff, but by far the most interesting aspect of this creature is it's unbelievable lifespan. A study of 28 specimens that concluded in 2016 yielded some fascinating results. It concluded that the oldest specimen was at least 272 years old and could have been up to five hundred! They further concluded that the species reaches sexual maturity at around 150 years of age.

Whale Shark
The largest fish in the sea with lengths that reach beyond 40 feet, the whale shark could be a predator with a reputation equal to that of the fiercest of all the sharks. Luckily though it's not really into big game hunting. These massive creatures prefer plankton, the diverse, tiny collection of organisms that live in large bodies of water. The whale shark swims up close to the surface of the ocean with it's mouth wide open, scooping up all the plankton and any other small sea creatures that happen to be in it's path. A massive, 21 ton specimen was scooped up in China in 2008 and you can see from it's picture just how big this creature can get.

Hey thanks so much for joining us. Before you take off make sure to subscribe to our channel so you’ll automatically get tomorrow’s video. And don’t forget to check out the oceans largest creatures, the...

Baleen Whales

The largest creatures on earth can all be found grouped into one species of ocean animal, the baleen whales. There are fifteen different kinds of baleen whales, including the Humpback whale, the rare North Pacific right whale and the single biggest creature on earth, the blue whale. The North Pacific right Whale has been hunted to near extinction and their small, scattered populations probably number no more than a few hundred total. Meanwhile, the massive blue whale wasn’t immune to the whaling that reduced the North Pacific right Whale population so badly, but there’s at least ten thousand of them, a robust number relatively speaking. They are an estimated 98 feet in length. Their highest verifiable recorded weight is a ridiculous 173 tons, though experts feel certain that they can grow up to have at least 180 tons of total mass.

LARGEST Ocean Creatures