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The pelagic food web, showing the central involvement of marine microorganisms in how the ocean imports nutrients from and then exports them back to the atmosphere and ocean floor. A marine food web is a food web of marine life. At the base of the ocean food web are single-celled algae and other plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton.
The tiny (0.6 μm) marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, discovered in 1986, forms today an important part of the base of the ocean food chain and accounts for much of the photosynthesis of the open ocean [140] and an estimated 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. [141]
A freshwater aquatic food web. The blue arrows show a complete food chain (algae → daphnia → gizzard shad → largemouth bass → great blue heron). A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community.
Seafood is any form of sea life regarded as food by humans. It prominently includes shellfish, and roe. Shellfish include various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. In most parts of the world, fish are generally not considered seafood even if they are from the sea.
From shallow waters to the deep sea, the open ocean to rivers and lakes, numerous terrestrial and marine species depend on the surface ecosystem and the organisms found there. [28] The ocean's surface acts like a skin between the atmosphere above and the water below, and harbours an ecosystem unique to this environment.
This diversity results in complex food webs, with large predator fish eating smaller forage fish that eat yet smaller zooplankton and so on. However, all food webs eventually depend on plants, which are the primary producers. Coral reefs typically produce 5–10 grams of carbon per square meter per day (gC·m −2 ·day −1) biomass. [101] [102]
Animals all around the world move from place to place each year in discovery of warmer weather, greater access to food, to lay eggs and have babies, and to avoid predators. This fascinating, yet ...
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.