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The ocean's surface acts like a skin between the atmosphere above and the water below, and hosts an ecosystem unique to this environment. This sun-drenched habitat can be defined as roughly one metre in depth, as nearly half of UV-B is attenuated within this first meter. [ 2 ]
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.
The ocean is known to be the habitat of over 230,000 species, but may hold considerably more – perhaps over two million species. [18] Yet, the ocean faces many environmental threats, such as marine pollution, overfishing, and the effects of climate change. Those effects include ocean warming, ocean acidification and sea level rise.
While the full implications of elevated CO 2 on marine ecosystems are still being documented, there is a substantial body of research showing that a combination of ocean acidification and elevated ocean temperature, driven mainly by CO 2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, have a compounded effect on marine life and the ocean environment. This ...
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 habitats can be divided into coastal and open ocean habitats.
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 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.
These low oxygen ocean areas are expanding as a result of ocean warming which both reduces water circulation and also reduces the oxygen content of that water, while the solubility of oxygen declines as the temperature rises. [56] Overall ocean oxygen concentrations are estimated to have declined 2% over 50 years from the 1960s. [56]