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Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, plants, algae, fungi, protists, single-celled microorganisms and associated viruses living in the saline water of marine habitats, either the sea water of marginal seas and oceans, or the brackish water of coastal wetlands, lagoons ...
General characteristics of a large marine ecosystem (Gulf of Alaska). Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, plants, algae, fungi, protists, single-celled microorganisms and associated viruses living in the saline water of marine habitats, either the sea water of marginal seas and oceans, or the brackish water of coastal ...
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea. Given that in biology many phyla , families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy .
The most proliferative extant group are the marine mammals, such as Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises, with some freshwater species) and Sirenia (dugongs and manatees), who are too evolved for aquatic life to survive on land at all (where they will die of beaching), as well as the highly aquatically adapted but land-dwelling pinnipeds ...
A marine habitat is a habitat that supports marine life. Marine life depends in some way on the saltwater that is in the sea (the term marine comes from the Latin mare, meaning sea or ocean). A habitat is an ecological or environmental area inhabited by one or more living species. [156] The marine environment supports many kinds of these habitats.
Reef life and oceanic processes create opportunities for the exchange of seawater, sediments, nutrients and marine life. Most coral reefs exist in waters less than 50 m deep. [56] Some inhabit tropical continental shelves where cool, nutrient-rich upwelling does not occur, such as the Great Barrier Reef.
Marine invertebrates are invertebrate animals that live in marine habitats, and make up most of the macroscopic life in the oceans. It is a polyphyletic blanket term that contains all marine animals except the marine vertebrates , including the non- vertebrate members of the phylum Chordata such as lancelets , sea squirts and salps .
The following table lists estimated numbers of described extant species for the major animal phyla, [66] along with their principal habitats (terrestrial, fresh water, [67] and marine), [68] and free-living or parasitic ways of life. [69]