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A marine coastal ecosystem is a marine ecosystem which occurs where the land meets the ocean. Worldwide there is about 620,000 kilometres (390,000 mi) of coastline. Coastal habitats extend to the margins of the continental shelves, occupying about 7 percent of the ocean surface area.
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 . [ 1 ]
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms.
The littoral zone, also called litoral or nearshore, is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. [1] In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal areas that are permanently submerged — known as the foreshore — and the terms are often used interchangeably.
Definition (marine biology), context, extra terminology [ edit ] In marine biology , the neritic zone , also called coastal waters , the coastal ocean or the sublittoral zone , [ 3 ] refers to that zone of the ocean where sunlight reaches the ocean floor , that is, where the water is never so deep as to take it out of the photic zone .
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 ...
One of the most comprehensive early classifications was the system of 53 coastal provinces developed by Briggs in 1974. [3] The near-global system of 64 large marine ecosystems has a partial biogeographic basis. WWF Global 200. The World Wildlife Fund—WWF identified 43 priority marine ecoregions, as part of its Global 200 initiative. [4]
Cape Cod also acts as a barrier to migration, meaning that most coastal aquatic species in the Gulf of Maine are absent in other parts of the coastal United States. [4] The Gulf of Maine is the southern limit of the northern shrimp ( Pandalus borealus ), a circumpolar shrimp that breeds in the Gulf of Maine in the winter.