--- title: The Southern Ocean: blue whales, colossal squid and life under the ice — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The Southern Ocean: blue whales, colossal squid and life under the ice», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: It looks empty and icy, but in spring tiny drifting plants turn the water green, tiny shrimp-like k --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / The Southern Ocean: blue whales, colos… # The Southern Ocean: blue whales, colossal squid and life under the ice Lesson 171 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/1/) — It looks empty and icy, but in spring tiny drifting plants turn the water green, tiny shrimp-like krill eat them, and the biggest animals that ever lived come to eat the krill. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/2/) — A blue whale opens its mouth, gulps a swimming-pool load of water full of krill, then pushes the water out through comb-like plates and swallows the krill, like straining pasta in a sieve. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/3/) — Deeper down live the colossal squid and the sperm whales that hunt squid, and even under thick ice shelves, far from open water, scientists have found fish, sponges and other animals. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/4/) — The blue whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived, bigger than any dinosaur; its heart is about the size of a bumper car at a fair, and its calls can travel hundreds of kilometres, but its throat is far too narrow to swallow anything as big as a person. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/5/) — Whales are not fish but mammals: they breathe air and feed their babies milk. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/6/) — The colossal squid lives in the deep Southern Ocean and is the heaviest animal without a backbone known; a young one was reported filmed alive in the wild for the first time in 2025. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/8/) — Humpback whales blow rings of bubbles around krill and fish to trap them, and their songs change over the years as whales across an ocean learn the new songs. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/9/) — The Antarctic Circumpolar Current flows round Antarctica and is the strongest ocean current in the world, carrying many times more water than all the world's rivers together. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/10/) — People hunted whales for oil and meat until the 1980s, when most whaling stopped; since then humpback numbers in some places have recovered greatly. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/11/) — Tiny drifting plants called phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean in spring, and whale poo helps feed them because it contains iron they need. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/12/) — In the cold Southern Ocean some animals grow much bigger than their cousins in warm seas, such as sea spiders as big as a dinner plate, which take in oxygen through their legs. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/13/) — A starfish pushes its stomach out of its body onto its food and digests the food outside; many Antarctic starfish are big and live for many years. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/14/) — In 2021 scientists drilling through about nine hundred metres of ice found sponges living on a rock underneath, far from open water and sunlight. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice/15/) — Elephant seals are the largest seals and, like other seals, have four flippers; the males have big noses like a short trunk, fight on beaches, and the seals can dive more than a kilometre and a half deep. - ← previous: [Antarctica: emperor huddles, krill, clear-blooded fish and stone-stealing penguins](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/170-antarctica-emperor-huddles-krill-clear-blooded-fish-and-stone-stealing-penguins/) - next →: [Coral reef builders: polyps, bleaching, sand from parrotfish and giant clams](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/172-coral-reef-builders-polyps-bleaching-sand-from-parrotfish-and-giant-clams/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)