It is based on the children's books written by Meomi, the design team of Vicki Wong and Michael C. Murphy.
Although its technology is fictional, the exotic creatures and locations that the crew encounter are based on real marine animals in their natural habitats.
[3][4] A Netflix-original spinoff, subtitled Above & Beyond, was released in September 2021, and featured the Octonauts venturing onto more land-based habitats of the natural world.
In 2010, The Octonauts was adapted into a 52-episode CGI animated television series co-produced by Chorion and Brown Bag Films.
[42] By season 4, the Octonauts had been picked up in more than 100 countries, including RTÉ Two (Ireland), Treehouse TV (Canada), ABC Television (Australia), TF1 (France), SuperRTL (Germany), CCTV (China), Karusel (Russia), Disney Junior (Spain, Portugal), and SVT (Sweden).
[43] The show has been translated and shown in French (TF1), Spanish and Portuguese (Discovery Kids Latin America), Finnish (YLE TV2), Welsh (S4C), and Slovakian (STV 2).
[44] The series was made with the help of marine biologists Dr. Lara A. Ferry-Graham and Dr. Michael H. Graham, who had previously worked on Finding Nemo.
The stories usually feature three main characters: Captain Barnacles, Kwazii, and Peso, with the other five Octonauts acting in supporting roles.
[45] The initial working title of the 2017 American Superhero film "Thor: Ragnarok" was "Creature Report", a reference to the Octonauts,[46][47] which acted as the movie production's code word.
Google Play and Microsoft Store organise their episodes into packages, similar to the region 4 DVD titles.
[63] In 2017, the series took home the Annie Award for Best Animated Television Production in the Preschool category for the episode "Operation: Deep Freeze".
[72] A spin off series, titled Octonauts: Above and Beyond, premiered on September 7, 2021, with the full first episode being released on YouTube on August 25.
In 2024, a new spin-off set in China aired exclusively on Chinese broadcast stations, with no news for an international release date.