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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.
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 wetlands, lagoons ...
Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism (or microbe) is any microscopic living organism or virus, which is invisibly small to the unaided human eye without magnification ...
So creatures that live at the bottom of cold oceans like the Arctic Ocean generally live in water 4 °C colder than at the bottom of frozen-over fresh water lakes and rivers. As the surface of sea water begins to freeze (at −1.9 °C for salinity 3.5%) the ice that forms is essentially salt-free, with about the same density as freshwater ice ...
Epineustonic organisms live on the water's surface, and in the open ocean all epineustonic species belong to the insect genus Halobates. Known as "sea skaters", Halobates sp. prey on other neustonic species and zooplankton trapped at the surface. [ 34 ]
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
Ocean currents can be generated by differences in the density of the water. How dense water is depends on how saline or warm it is. If water contains differences in salt content or temperature, then the different densities will initiate a current. Water that is saltier or cooler will be denser, and will sink in relation to the surrounding water.
These figures can be contrasted with the estimate for the total biomass for animals on the planet, which is about 2 Gt C, and the total biomass of humans, which is 0.06 Gt C. [7] This means archaea collectively have over 100 times the collective biomass of humans, and bacteria over 1000 times.