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Marine biology studies species that live in marine habitats. Most of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, which is the home to marine life. Oceans average nearly four kilometers in-depth and are fringed with coastlines that run for about 360,000 kilometres. [4] [5] Marine biology can be contrasted with biological oceanography.
Mary Margaret Hagedorn (born September 12, 1954) is a US marine biologist specialised in physiology who has developed a conservation program for coral species, using the principles of cryobiology, the study of cellular systems under cold conditions, and cryopreservation, the freezing of sperm and embryos.
Biological oceanography is the study of how organisms affect and are affected by the physics, chemistry, and geology of the oceanographic system.Biological oceanography may also be referred to as ocean ecology, in which the root word of ecology is Oikos (oικoσ), meaning ‘house’ or ‘habitat’ in Greek.
Today, marine species range in size from the microscopic phytoplankton, which can be as small as 0.02–micrometres; to huge cetaceans like the blue whale, which can reach 33 m (108 ft) in length. [5] [6] Marine microorganisms have been variously estimated as constituting about 70% [7] or about 90% [8] [1] of the total marine biomass.
Examination of a 9 m (30 ft) giant squid, the second largest cephalopod, that washed ashore in Norway in 1954 In zoology, deep-sea gigantism or abyssal gigantism is the tendency for species of deep-sea dwelling animals to be larger than their shallower-water relatives across a large taxonomic range.
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.
Part of the marine carbon cycle transforms carbon between non-living and living matter. Three main processes (or pumps) that make up the marine carbon cycle bring atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) into the ocean interior and distribute it through the oceans. These three pumps are: (1) the solubility pump, (2) the carbonate pump, and (3) the ...
It was the first expedition purely devoted to marine science. The expedition collected and analyzed thousands of marine specimens, laying the foundation for present knowledge about life near the deep-sea floor. [22] The findings from the expedition were a summary of the known natural, physical and chemical ocean science to that time. [23]