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Seaweed species such as kelps provide essential nursery habitat for fisheries and other marine species and thus protect food sources; other species, such as planktonic algae, play a vital role in capturing carbon and producing at least 50% of Earth's oxygen. [3] Natural seaweed ecosystems are sometimes under threat from human activity.
Algae (UK: / ˈ æ l ɡ iː / AL-ghee, US: / ˈ æ l dʒ iː / AL-jee; [3] sg.: alga / ˈ æ l ɡ ə / AL-gə) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotes, which include species from multiple distinct clades.
Foxfire in the fungus Panellus stipticus Blue ocean glow caused by myriad tiny organisms, such as Noctiluca. Noctiluca scintillans, a bioluminescent dinoflagellate. Bioluminescence is the production of light by living organisms. This list of bioluminescent organisms is organized by the environment, covering terrestrial, marine, and microorganisms.
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 ...
Ice algae are any of the various types of algal communities found in annual and multi-year sea, and terrestrial lake ice or glacier ice. On sea ice in the polar oceans, ice algae communities play an important role in primary production .
Marine botany is the study of flowering vascular plant species and marine algae that live in shallow seawater of the open ocean and the littoral zone, along shorelines of the intertidal zone, coastal wetlands, and low-salinity brackish water of estuaries. It is a branch of marine biology and botany.
Over 1500 species of fungi are known from marine environments. [109] These are parasitic on marine algae or animals, or are saprobes feeding on dead organic matter from algae, corals, protozoan cysts, sea grasses, and other substrata. [110] Spores of many species have special appendages which facilitate attachment to the substratum. [111]
Another example is Sargassum, which creates unique floating mats of seaweed in the tropical waters of the Sargasso Sea that serve as the habitats for many species. Some members of the class, such as kelps, are used by humans as food. Between 1,500 and 2,000 species of brown algae are known worldwide. [5]