The song is a plea by the crabSebastian imploring Ariel to remain sea-bound, and resist her desire to become a human in order to spend her life with Prince Eric, with whom she has fallen in love. Sebastian warns of the struggles of human life, while at the same time expounding the benefits of a care-free life underwater. However, his plea falls on deaf ears, as Ariel leaves before the end of the song.
In 2007, the Broadway musical version used this as the featured production number, with the role of Sebastian played by Tituss Burgess. For Burgess, a tenor (unlike the baritone Wright), the key of the song was raised from B-flat to D. In the Original Broadway Cast, the placing of the song was also moved to after the scene in which King Triton destroys Ariel's collection of "human stuff". Later in some local productions after the Broadway production closed, the placing of the song is the same as it was in the original film. The key was lowered slightly to the key of C (in which Ashman and Menken recorded their initial demos for The Little Mermaid).
In 2002, the song was featured in the Square Enix action RPG Kingdom Hearts as the background music for the Atlantica world. In 2005, the song also appeared in Kingdom Hearts II as part of a minigame where it was rearranged to have parts for Sebastian, Ariel, and Sora. For both appearances, the music was arranged by Yoko Shimomura.
The Brazilian singer Diogo Nogueira made a Portuguese version of the song ("Aqui no Mar", meaning something like, "Here at Sea") in a samba style on the album Disney Adventures in Samba.
In 2005, Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai recorded the Chinese version of the song to celebrate the grand opening of Hong Kong Disneyland.
In 2007, a Korean version sung by SM Entertainment artists The Grace, Super Junior, and Zhang Liyin was released. It was later re-recorded in 2015 by the agency's trainee team SM Rookies for the Korean Mickey Mouse Show and the SM Rookies Show.
In the 2012 album Disney - Koe no Oujisama, which features various Japanese voice actors covering Disney songs. This song was covered by Miyu Irino, who previously covered the song in Kingdom Hearts II as Sora's Japanese voice.
In 2013, Alex Day covered the song for his album Epigrams and Interludes.
In 2017, D-Metal Stars created a Heavy Metal cover of the song on the album "Metal Disney" featuring Mike Vescera and Rudy Sarzo
The track is also covered for the video game Just Dance 2016.
In 2017, The Ocean Cure covered the song for the compilation album "Hardcore Goes Disney".
In 2019, the Swedish/Chilean artist DJ Méndez covered the song in Spanish for the Swedish compilation album "We Love Disney".
In 2020, reggae musician Shaggy covered the song on his Hot Shot 2020 album.
Samples the song "Rhythm of the Night." - De Barge
In 1991, this song was parodied by musician Tom Smith with his song, "On The PC". This song was re-written in 1999 as "PC99".
The song was parodied on the TV show Kappa Mikey where Mikey tries to convince a squid to live on land with him.
The song was parodied on the TV show Bobby's World as "Underwater the Fish Don't Stink". The context was a dream of Bobby's in which he was a fish and his Uncle Ted was a merman - it turned out Bobby was having the dream because he was sleeping outside and the lawn sprinklers had turned on.
The song was parodied on the TV show The Simpsons in the episode "Homer Badman," in a sequence where Homer Simpson imagines living under water (eating all of the characters from The Little Mermaid) to escape the protesters and media circus who have accused him of sexually harassing a college coed.
In 2014, College Humor created a parody "Deep under the sea, fish are ugly" discussing strange creatures of the deep sea.[8]
The song, as well as a majority of other factors in the film, was parodied in an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy in which Billy's character goes swimming and encounters a small yellow crab (voiced by Steven Blum) who sings a song for him entitled "Under the Ocean" in a style reminiscent of the scene of Sebastian singing the song for Ariel.
