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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] The marine environment supports many kinds of these habitats.
Marine ecosystems are characterized by the biological community of organisms that they are associated with and their physical environment. Classes of organisms found in marine ecosystems include brown algae, dinoflagellates, corals, cephalopods, echinoderms, and sharks. Marine ecosystems are important sources of ecosystem services and food and ...
Ocean surfaces occupy 72% of the Earth's total surface. They can be divided into surfaces of the relatively shallow and nutrient rich coastal areas above the continental shelves (light blue), and surfaces of the more expansive and relatively deeper but nutrient poor ocean that lies beyond (deep blue). External videos.
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. Marine coastal ecosystems include many very different types ...
Reefs around tropical islands and atolls drop abruptly to great depths and do not have such a floor. Usually sandy, the floor often supports seagrass meadows which are important foraging areas for reef fish. The reef drop-off is, for its first 50 m, habitat for reef fish who find shelter on the cliff face and plankton in the water nearby. The ...
Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) was defined by the U.S. Congress in the 1996 amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, or Magnuson-Stevens Act, as "those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding or growth to maturity." [1] Implementing regulations clarified that waters include all ...
An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem found in and around a body of water, in contrast to land-based terrestrial ecosystems. Aquatic ecosystems contain communities of organisms — aquatic life —that are dependent on each other and on their environment. The two main types of aquatic ecosystems are marine ecosystems and freshwater ecosystems. [1]
Frequently considered an ecosystem engineer, kelp provides a physical substrate and habitat for kelp forest communities. [16] In algae (kingdom Protista), the body of an individual organism is known as a thallus rather than as a plant (kingdom Plantae). The morphological structure of a kelp thallus is defined by three basic structural units: [10]