The Ocean
Descriptions/ Characteristics
Oceans are the largest body of salt water. They are charcterized by their size, presence of salt, and flora/fauna. Because the ocean biome is so widespread, there is a variation of temperature. Oceans take up a lot of space and get good amounts of rain (6+ inches/ month). They support a very abundant and diverse animal and plant life.
Climatograph
This is a climatograph taken in Hawaii. It is the closest thing to the actual ocean biome. This graph compares rainfall to temperature. This graph shows that the ocean is fairly warm around the equator. It also gets a large amount of precipitation. The ocean biome affects the nearby land by making it humid because of its large water content.
Animal Adaptations
Obviously, fish and animals need to be able to survive under water for long periods of time. This can mean gills to breathe or the ability to hold one's breath until coming to the surface.
Many animals have sharp teeth, spikes, poison, venom, the ability to camoflage, agility, bright colors, or mimic other dangerous animals to eat or avoid being eaten.
Many animals have sharp teeth, spikes, poison, venom, the ability to camoflage, agility, bright colors, or mimic other dangerous animals to eat or avoid being eaten.
Some examples of ocean animals:
1. Sea turtles- (pictured below) have a hard shell for protection from predators.
1. Sea turtles- (pictured below) have a hard shell for protection from predators.
2. Sea otters (pictured below), also a keystone species, are very fast swimmers, have a fur coat, and claws. All of these help the otter find food and crack open clams. Sea otters also keep the sea urchin population controlled.
3. Humpback Whale
4. Morray Eel
5. Rock Fish
4. Morray Eel
5. Rock Fish
Plant Adaptations
Plants in the ocean must be able to thrive in saline, underwater environments. Some must be able to live with little sunlight.
1. Green Algae (pictured below)
1. Green Algae (pictured below)
2. Red Coraline Algae (pictured below)
3. Kelp
4. Seaweed
5. Seagrass
4. Seaweed
5. Seagrass
Keystone Species- The Great White Shark
The great white shark is considered a top predator keystone species because the shark feeds on and regulates the populations of many fish and sea creatures. Without this regulation, many species populations would become extinct or suffer severe population crashes.
Indicator Species- Coral
Coral is very sensitive to changes in the environment. Slight temperature changes and pollution can compromise them. For example, bleached, dead reefs indicate an unhealthy environment. They are sadly disappearing. Global warming affects them particularly.
K-Strategist
Blue whales are very large, eat a lot, and care for their young. The young whales stay with their parent for at least a year. These whales eat mostly krill. They are the largest mammals on earth.
R-Strategist
Krill are small, shrimplike animals. They serve as food for whales and other animals. Krill are very near the bottom of the food chain. They feed on phytoplankton and are about 2 inches long. To support so many larger creatures, there has to be an abundance of krill. They don't care for their young. They are invertebrates.
Environmental Problems/ Threats
We are using and throwing away a sickeningly high amount of plastic each year. Worldwide, 100 million tons of plastic is used each year and each person on earth disposes of 185 pounds of plastic per year. Human society has become a disposable one: Plastics products that are being mass produced take hundreds of thousands of years to decompose, yet they are used for applications that take mere seconds, minutes, hours, and days. All of this has a negative impact on the ocean and its inhabitants. Pollution is threatening many costal and marine ecosystems around the world, and when one species is affected or harmed, all other species in the food web are affected. Since plastic never degrades; it has to go somewhere. The plastic goods market is growing faster than the emerging landfill space. Many companies and nations have to resort to other means of disposal; this usually means the ocean. Human society has used oceans as dumping grounds for pollution and waste for many years, and many of the world’s landfills are being filled with material that never breaks down, so storm drains, rivers, and dumping boats end up carrying an enormous amount of garbage to the ocean. Once it gets in the ocean, it gets carried by ocean currents until it reaches a slow-moving swirling gyre about twice the size of France (Dumas) off the coast of California, where trash can linger for more than sixteen years. In some deep areas, the water is contaminated with more than 100,000 items of floating plastic per square kilometer. 70-80 percent of the waste found here comes from the land. This water-logged landfill, called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is considered ‘the single largest body of pollution in the world.’ A remarkable ninety percent constitutes the plastic portion of all the marine debris in the area, appearing as a sort of ‘plastic soup’ (Bialik). This ‘soup’ serves as a clear representation to “humanity’s reliance on plastic and our failure to dispose of it properly” . Plastic accounts for over 80 percent of all the litter found in ocean bodies, making it the “most pervasive type of marine litter” . Nowadays, the minimum amount of particulate pollution in the GPGP is 100,000 pieces per square mile. All of these plastic particles flow throughout the water column and are impossible to clean up (Maqueda). This dangerous amount of pollution negatively influences the local marine wildlife, both physically and biologically. Plastic in the ocean physically harms animals and birds when the material is ingested, strangles the animal, or interferes with its normal growth. Photos of animals harmed by plastic debris depict horrifying images of:
Decomposed albatross bodies, their bloated stomachs exposing horrific last meals of lids, nurdles, and cigarette lighters (see fig.1), compete for space beside unrecognizable turtles, their shells disgustingly disfigured from a life with six pack beer holders lodged tight around their middles (Dumas).
Because of the way plastic breaks up, small fragments of varying sizes pose as colorful ‘food’ for all trophic levels of the food chain. The texture of natural food is very similar to that of plastic, so it is easily mistaken for forms of nourishment (Dumas). Plastic ingested by birds, mammals, and fish can pierce internal organs or trick the animal into believing that it is no longer hungry, causing death and starvation (Bialik). Albatross even accidentally feed their offspring unfulfilling plastic, mistaking it as food . This is depicted in a comic (see fig. 2)(Dumas). On Midway Atoll, 40 percent of all albatross chicks die because they have been fed too much plastic, and surviving albatross chicks are fed about five tons of plastic per year (Weiss). Other animals are affected as well. Sea animals can become trapped, tangled, and even eventually deformed in larger pieces of plastic. An estimated one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die from plastic pollution alone in the patch each year, causing stress on ecosystems and contributing to extinction. The Hawaiian Monk Seal and the Laysan Albatross are currently on the brink of extinction if the GPGP doesn’t change (Dumas). In a five year study, 95 percent of fulmar sea birds had plastic in their stomachs (Litvinsky). About one million seabirds and 100,000 sea lions, seals, dolphins, whales, sea turtles, and other creatures choke to death or get tangled in nets made of plastic each year (Weiss). Toxins carried by plastics have enormous biological implications on the well-beings of sea creatures and birds by creating poisonous habitats. These habits provide a concentrated area of chemicals because plastics actually absorb toxins. They have the capability to contain a million times the concentration found in surrounding ocean water (Dumas). Plastics behave like sponges, soaking up a dangerous amount of pollutants; these later serve as ‘toxic pills’ to hungry marine victims (Weiss). Charles Moore, the first person to see the GPGP, states: What we are doing in the ocean with the breakdown of plastic into microscopic nanoparticles is carrying on an uncontrolled experiment in toxic drug delivery to every organism in the ocean with zero monitoring and zero controls (Moore). Since many of these toxins are carcinogens or highly toxic, animals and fish can become sickened, poisoned, or even develop cancer. DDT, a harmful insecticide, clings to the surface area of plastic particles and kills fish. Trash can even leach out chemicals that were present during production (Dumas). All of these chemicals can spread in the ocean, harming microscopic phytoplankton, fish, birds, and mammals. These chemicals find their way to the top of the food chain once fish eat contaminated plankton, bigger fish eat them, and so on. Some of these toxins are ‘proven endocrine disrupters’ that can interfere with natural hormones. This kind of biological disruption can cause cancer and reproduction disorders. If a species is unable to reproduce, its extinction becomes imminent (Dumas).
Oil spills also damage the ocean biome. It has caused many species to become threatened and has poisoned many areas.
Overfishing and killing top predators also hurts the population stability in the ocean.
Decomposed albatross bodies, their bloated stomachs exposing horrific last meals of lids, nurdles, and cigarette lighters (see fig.1), compete for space beside unrecognizable turtles, their shells disgustingly disfigured from a life with six pack beer holders lodged tight around their middles (Dumas).
Because of the way plastic breaks up, small fragments of varying sizes pose as colorful ‘food’ for all trophic levels of the food chain. The texture of natural food is very similar to that of plastic, so it is easily mistaken for forms of nourishment (Dumas). Plastic ingested by birds, mammals, and fish can pierce internal organs or trick the animal into believing that it is no longer hungry, causing death and starvation (Bialik). Albatross even accidentally feed their offspring unfulfilling plastic, mistaking it as food . This is depicted in a comic (see fig. 2)(Dumas). On Midway Atoll, 40 percent of all albatross chicks die because they have been fed too much plastic, and surviving albatross chicks are fed about five tons of plastic per year (Weiss). Other animals are affected as well. Sea animals can become trapped, tangled, and even eventually deformed in larger pieces of plastic. An estimated one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die from plastic pollution alone in the patch each year, causing stress on ecosystems and contributing to extinction. The Hawaiian Monk Seal and the Laysan Albatross are currently on the brink of extinction if the GPGP doesn’t change (Dumas). In a five year study, 95 percent of fulmar sea birds had plastic in their stomachs (Litvinsky). About one million seabirds and 100,000 sea lions, seals, dolphins, whales, sea turtles, and other creatures choke to death or get tangled in nets made of plastic each year (Weiss). Toxins carried by plastics have enormous biological implications on the well-beings of sea creatures and birds by creating poisonous habitats. These habits provide a concentrated area of chemicals because plastics actually absorb toxins. They have the capability to contain a million times the concentration found in surrounding ocean water (Dumas). Plastics behave like sponges, soaking up a dangerous amount of pollutants; these later serve as ‘toxic pills’ to hungry marine victims (Weiss). Charles Moore, the first person to see the GPGP, states: What we are doing in the ocean with the breakdown of plastic into microscopic nanoparticles is carrying on an uncontrolled experiment in toxic drug delivery to every organism in the ocean with zero monitoring and zero controls (Moore). Since many of these toxins are carcinogens or highly toxic, animals and fish can become sickened, poisoned, or even develop cancer. DDT, a harmful insecticide, clings to the surface area of plastic particles and kills fish. Trash can even leach out chemicals that were present during production (Dumas). All of these chemicals can spread in the ocean, harming microscopic phytoplankton, fish, birds, and mammals. These chemicals find their way to the top of the food chain once fish eat contaminated plankton, bigger fish eat them, and so on. Some of these toxins are ‘proven endocrine disrupters’ that can interfere with natural hormones. This kind of biological disruption can cause cancer and reproduction disorders. If a species is unable to reproduce, its extinction becomes imminent (Dumas).
Oil spills also damage the ocean biome. It has caused many species to become threatened and has poisoned many areas.
Overfishing and killing top predators also hurts the population stability in the ocean.