There's turtles, kelp, bubbles and stuff in the next version (1.13) and they've rebuilt the terrain gen so it won't produce fucking map errors. Joyously, they've also updated the way that water works and have made items flow upwards; for lava lamps or streams of watermelon that you run through. Not faster than existing elevators but superb.
I also hear that they are back-filling existing oceans, which is ace!