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Since liquid water flows, ocean waters cycle and flow in currents around the world. Since water easily changes phase, it can be carried into the atmosphere as water vapour or frozen as an iceberg. It can then precipitate or melt to become liquid water again. All marine life is immersed in water, the matrix and womb of life itself. [7]
Hypoxia can occur throughout the water column and also at high altitudes as well as near sediments on the bottom. It usually extends throughout 20–50% of the water column, but depends on the water depth and location of pycnoclines (rapid changes in water density with depth). It can occur in 10–80% of the water column.
So creatures that live at the bottom of cold oceans like the Arctic Ocean generally live in water 4 °C colder than at the bottom of frozen-over fresh water lakes and rivers. As the surface of sea water begins to freeze (at −1.9 °C for salinity 3.5%) the ice that forms is essentially salt-free, with about the same density as freshwater ice ...
Gas vacuoles are made up of a shell of protein that has a highly hydrophobic inner surface, making it impermeable to water (and stopping water vapour from condensing inside) but permeable to most gases. Because the gas vesicle is a hollow cylinder, it is liable to collapse when the surrounding pressure increases.
Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism (or microbe) is any microscopic living organism or virus, which is invisibly small to the unaided human eye without magnification ...
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 ...
Some chemolithotrophs can also facilitate the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide into elemental sulfur, according to the following chemical equation: [14] H 2 S + O 2 → S + H 2 O 2. Anoxia is quite common in muddy ocean bottoms where there are both high amounts of organic matter and low levels of inflow of oxygenated water through the sediment.
Pelagic zones. The ocean can be conceptualized as being divided into various zones, depending on depth, and presence or absence of sunlight.Nearly all life forms in the ocean depend on the photosynthetic activities of phytoplankton and other marine plants to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon, which is the basic building block of organic matter.