Sea Animals Coloring Pages

• Octopus: eight arms, three hearts and blue blood
• Blue whale: the largest animal that has ever lived, longer than two school buses
• Jellyfish: no brain, no heart and no bones, just a soft bell and trailing tentacles
• Sea star: often called a starfish, and it can regrow a lost arm
• Crab: walks sideways and wears its skeleton on the outside
• Seahorse: a small fish with a curled tail that grips seagrass
• Sea turtle: there are more on the turtle page
• Dolphins and sharks: each has a set of its own: dolphins and sharks

More than two thirds of Earth is covered by ocean, and most of it has never been explored. Sunlight only reaches the top layer of the sea. Below that it is dark, and some deep-sea animals make their own light. An octopus can change color in less than a second to match the rocks around it. Coral looks like stone or plants, but a reef is built by tiny animals called polyps. A sea otter floats on its back and uses a rock to crack open shellfish. A narwhal's long tusk is really a tooth.

For the water, don't reach for one blue. Use light turquoise near the surface and darker blue toward the bottom of the page. Teachers often use a trick called crayon resist: kids color the animals firmly with wax crayons, then wash watery blue paint over everything, and the paint slides off the wax. Real colors are wilder than you'd expect. Sea stars can be orange, purple or red, jellyfish are often pink or pale blue, and many crabs are bright red or blue.