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The oceanic zone is typically defined as the area of the ocean lying beyond the continental shelf (e.g. the neritic zone), but operationally is often referred to as beginning where the water depths drop to below 200 metres (660 ft), seaward from the coast into the open ocean with its pelagic zone.
Ocean stratification is the natural separation of an ocean's water into horizontal layers by density. This is generally stable stratification , because warm water floats on top of cold water, and heating is mostly from the sun, which reinforces that arrangement.
The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. [8] In English, the term ocean also refers to any of the large bodies of water into which the world ocean is conventionally divided. [9] The following names describe five different areas of the ocean: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and Arctic.
The pelagic wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) ranges over huge areas of ocean and can circle the globe. Hydrophis platurus, the yellow-bellied sea snake, is the only one of the 65 species of marine snakes to spend its entire life in the pelagic zone. It bears live young at sea and is helpless on land.
Many tropical areas have both a dry and a wet season. The wet season, rainy season or green season is the time of year, ranging from one or more months when most of the average annual rainfall in a region falls. [9] Areas with wet seasons are disseminated across portions of the tropics and subtropics, some even in temperate regions. [10]
A tropical marine climate is a tropical climate that is primarily influenced by the ocean. It is usually experienced by islands and coastal areas 10° to 20° north and south of the equator. There are two main seasons in a tropical marine climate: the wet season and the dry season. The annual rainfall is 1000 to over 1500 mm (39 to 59 inches).
Marine ecosystems can be divided into many zones depending upon water depth and shoreline features. The oceanic zone is the vast open part of the ocean where animals such as whales, sharks, and tuna live. The benthic zone consists of substrates below water where many invertebrates live. The intertidal zone is
Below this mixed layer, at depths of 200–300 m in the open ocean, the temperature begins to decrease rapidly down to about 1000 m. The water layer within which the temperature gradient is steepest is known as the permanent thermocline. [5] The temperature difference through this layer may be as large as 20 °C, depending on latitude.