The Marine Biome

By Olivia Lauster&

Leah Osche

Pollution• Marine pollution comes in many different forms. The pollution

consists of plastic litter, glass bottles, oil and chemical spills or polluted storm water.

• The effect this has on the marine environment can vary. The pollution may only harm a few sea creatures or it may endanger a whole community of different living things

• Off shore, oil rigs and oil tanks also leak or wreck in storms releasing huge amounts of oil into the marine life creating a large amount of damage.

• Another pollution problem is dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. Many scientists think that this will change the chemistry of the sea water since co2 is soluble in water. This would then create flooding all around the world

Endangering Human Activities• We always look to the sea for food. Many species of fish have

became rare because of the lack of restrictions due to over fishing

• Over fishing is a major concern. Many industrialized fishing fleets in 4 months can produce 1000 tons of fish meals and 10000 ton of fish products. While they are fishing, non food species are killed too like dolphins and sharks because they get caught in nets.

Organizations:

• Cetacean Alliance: is an organization that is committed to preserve marine biodiversity and reduce human impact on cetacean populations.

• Blue Ocean Institute: a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring ocean conservation through science, art, and literature. It is providing information that will help people make choices about restoring abudance such as fish food

• Greenpeace International : A campaign focusing on three major threats to the world's oceans: overfishing, pirate fishing, whaling, and intensive shrimp aquaculture

Diseases and Sickness• Small plastic fragments can be mistaken as food by fish or other sea life

which can kill them by filling up or damaging their stomach or other digestive organs.

• Even the slightest type of oil contamination can kill the larvae of marine animals and spread diseases through kelp forests. The chemical ingredients of oil causes physiological changes in organisms causing them to act different also.

• . Algae blooms that feed on human sewage can choke fish gills and even poison them with the chemicals created from the decomposition process.

•There is also a lot of trash in the ocean but the main thing found in the water are the six pack ring holders that get around birds and other animals and kill them

Endangered Species:Loss of habitats and spread of diseases in the marine biome have

driven more than 200 species to near extinction. For Example:Balloon Fish

Beluga WhalesOrcas

Giant SquidGreen Sea Turtles

Australian Sea LionsBottlenose DolphinsGalapagos PenguinsHammerhead Sharks

Polar Bears

Poisonous AnimalsYellow Bellied Sea Snake- has venomous fangs and its habitat is in

Hawaiian waters. Can paralysis or can lead to cardiac arrest.Stingray- Has a tail with poisonous barb usually located near shallow

sandy areas. Punctures in abdomen or chest are very serious and need medical attention immediately.

Scorpion Fish- has many toxic spines can do a lot of damage lives around rocky shallow coastal waters like coral reefs. Keep out of crevices or places you cant see this is where they found.

Jellyfish- has stinging tentacles and very common in all bodies of water. Box jellyfish regularly swarm to Hawaii's Leeward shores 9 to 10 days after the full moon.

Cone Snail- Has poisonous tips and can be found in tide pools and shallow to deep off-shore waters.

Plants and Animals

Small plants and animals• Plankton• Worms• Clams• Mollusks• Marsh grasses• Algae

Big plants and animals• Whales• Sharks• Dolphins• Octopus• Coral reefs• Kelp

Phytoplankton (Microscopic protists like algae) Bacteria

Krill Shrimp Small FishSmall Squid

Whale Big Fish Seal Penguin

Killer Whale

Food Web

Complex network of feeding relationships

within the marine biome

Location• Marine regions cover about three-fourths of the Earth's surface and include

oceans, coral reefs, and estuaries.

Climate in DepthLike ponds and lakes, the ocean regions are separated into separate zones:

intertidal, pelagic, abyssal, and benthic.

Depth’s• The intertidal zone is where the ocean meets the land — sometimes it is

submerged and at other times exposed, as waves and tides come in and out.

• The pelagic zone includes those waters further from the land, basically the open ocean. The pelagic zone is generally cold though it is hard to give a general temperature range since, there is thermal stratification with a constant mixing of warm and cold ocean currents.

• The benthic zone is the area below the pelagic zone, but does not include the very deepest parts of the ocean.Here temperature decreases as depth increases toward the abyssal zone, since light cannot penetrate through the deeper water.

• The deep ocean is the abyssal zone. The water in this region is very cold (around 3° C), highly pressured, high in oxygen content, but low in nutritional content.

Current Flows• Currents flow in complex patterns affected by wind, the water's salinity and heat content, bottom

topography, and the earth's rotation.Upwelling brings cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths up to the surface. Earth's rotation and strong seasonal winds push surface water away from some western coasts, so water rises on the western edges of continents to replace it. Marine life thrives in these nutrient-rich waters .

• Deep water forms when sea water entering polar regions cools or freezes, becoming saltier and denser. Colder or saltier water tends to sink . A global "conveyor belt" set in motion when deep water forms in the North Atlantic, sinks, moves south, and circulates around Antarctica, and then moves northward to the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic basins. It can take a thousand years for water from the North Atlantic to find its way into the North Pacific .

• Warm surface currents invariably flow from the tropics to the higher latitudes, driven mainly by atmospheric winds, as well as the earth's rotation. Western boundary currents are good examples of warm surface currents: they are warm and fast, and they move from tropical to temperate latitudes .

• Cold surface currents come from polar and temperate latitudes, and they tend to flow towards the equator. Like the warm surface currents, they are driven mainly by atmospheric forces. Gyres form when the major ocean currents connect.

• Water flows in a circular pattern--clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere The Gulf Stream surface current is a western boundary current, one of the strongest--warm, deep, fast, and relatively salty. It separates open-ocean water from coastal water.

The Bottom of the Ocean• The bottom of the ocean is a very important place for marine life. Just about 90% of all marine

species live at least part of their life associated with the bottom. We call this mode of life 'benthic.'Some species even live under the surface of the bottom of the ocean called infauna. The bottom of the ocean is a major area of decomposition where organic material is recycled

Type’s of Bottoms• Terrogenous bottoms come from Earth's crust. These bottoms can

be solid rock, or the products from weathering and erosion of this rock. Much of the weathering and erosion takes place on land, after which the resulting sediments are washed into the ocean.

• Biogenous bottoms are sometimes referred to as oozes depending on the most common type of shell material in the sediments.

• Hydrogenous bottoms result from dissolved materials (primarily metals) precipitating from seawater. Most of these are called manganese nodules and are composed of layers of metals such as manganese, iron, nickel, cobalt and copper

• A rift valley is a linear-shaped lowland between highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift or fault.

• The oceanic trenches are hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea floor. They are also the deepest parts of the ocean floor.

Tidal Waves• A wave that moves up to 200 MPH and is

up to 1,000 feet high. • Causes         Hurricane storm surge         Underwater earthquake         Unusual astronomical conditions• Effects         Flooding         Destruction of coastline         Damage to property and homes

Coastlines

• A pelagic coast refers to a coast which fronts the open ocean, as opposed to a more sheltered coast in a gulf or bay.

• A shore, on the other hand, can refer to parts of the land which adjoin any large body of water, including oceans (sea shore) and lakes (lake shore). Similarly, the somewhat related term "bank" refers to the land alongside or sloping down to a river (riverbank) or to a body of water smaller than a lake.

• "Bank" is also used in some parts of the world to refer to an artificial ridge of earth intended to retain the water of a river or pond. In other places this may be called a levee.

Sources:http://www.uga.edu/lea/allies/life.htmlhttp://www.marinebio.org/search/index.asphttp://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/oceans/kids/marine-

pollution.htmlhttp://www.uga.edu/lea/allies/environment.htmlhttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/marine.phphttp://rrms-biomes.tripod.com/id12.htmlhttp://hubpages.com/hub/Marine-Biomeshttp://www.animalsoftheworld.ecsd.net/biomes.htm