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Spider crabs are the largest crustaceans in the world.

Hagfish are jawless, eel-like scavengers that produce large amounts of slime to deter predators. To clean themselves, they tie into knots and scrape it off. They’ve stayed mostly unchanged for over 330 million years and feed by burrowing into soft carcasses, playing a key role in recycling dead animals on the ocean floor.

Box jellies are found off the west coast of South Africa and are often encountered in swarms by scuba divers.

Named for their ghostly, transparent bells, moon jellies have short tentacles that are armed with stinging cells or nematocysts. Fortunately, their sting is not as toxic as that of other jellies.

The longsnout pipefish (Syngnathus temminckii) is found throughout South African waters. It occurs in the waters off southern Africa from Walvis Bay to the Thukela Bank on the Kwa-Zulu Natal coast.

Life depends on plankton. Plankton is made up of microscopic plants (phytoplankton) and animals (zooplankton). Zooplankton feed on phytoplankton and drift with the currents.

You’re probably thinking, “Wow, look at the size of these guys! Yum!” These West Coast rock lobsters (crayfish or ‘’kreef’’ as they are known locally) are approximately 30 years old! The chances of you seeing crayfish this size in the ocean these days are minimal. Rock lobsters grow very slowly and can live to the ripe old age of 50 years or so.

Also known as the double sash butterflyfish, this is the only butterflyfish species to be found in both the Indian (warm) and the Atlantic (cold) oceans.

The South African butterflyfish is endemic to our coast.

Ragged-tooth sharks, also known as grey nurse sharks in Australia and as sand tiger sharks in the USA, occur in temperate to tropical coastal waters of the Atlantic, Indian and western Pacific oceans. In South Africa they are common along the eastern and southern coasts, occurring as far west as False Bay.

Like all crustaceans, rock lobsters have a hard exoskeleton (meaning the skeleton is on the outside of the body rather than on the inside like ours). The skeleton is jointed, allowing rock lobsters to move quickly and efficiently on their 10 jointed legs. Although the hard exoskeleton is like armour or a bullet-proof vest and protects them from predators, rock lobsters have to shed the skeleton in order to grow. This is called moulting. During moulting, rock lobsters are soft and vulnerable to predators until their new shell hardens.

These deep-water rock lobsters live at depths of between 90 and 170m. Because they are deep-sea creatures, they are only caught commercially using baited lobster pots.

Sea stars (we don’t call them starfish anymore, because they’re not really fish!). Sea stars belong to the echinoderm group and their scientific name is Asteroidea.

These creatures are common on the rocky shores of the Western Cape. They are either orange or blue grey in colour. The spines are surrounded by a circle of tiny white nippers that are used for defence and to keep the starfish clean.