Marine biology

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(Redirected from
Marine biologist
)
For the scientific journal, see Marine Biology (journal).
"Marine biologist" redirects here. For the Seinfeld episode, see The Marine Biologist.
open ocean habitats). Clockwise from top left: Tide pool in Santa Cruz, United States; School of barracuda at Pom Pom Island, Malaysia; Fan mussel in a Mediterranean seagrass meadow; Research submarine
for marine research.
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Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of

environment rather than on taxonomy
.

A large proportion of all

cetaceans (whales) 25–32 meters (82–105 feet) in length. Marine ecology
is the study of how marine organisms interact with each other and the environment.

Marine life is a vast resource, providing food, medicine, and raw materials, in addition to helping to support

Shorelines are in part shaped and protected by marine life, and some marine organisms even help create new land.[3]

Many species are economically important to humans, including both finfish and shellfish. It is also becoming understood that the well-being of marine organisms and other organisms are linked in fundamental ways. The human body of knowledge regarding the relationship between life in the sea and important cycles is rapidly growing, with new discoveries being made nearly every day. These cycles include those of matter (such as the

Earth's respiration, and movement of energy through ecosystems
including the ocean). Large areas beneath the ocean surface still remain effectively unexplored.

Biological oceanography

Main article: Biological oceanography
Two views of the ocean from space
Marine biology studies species that live in marine habitats. Most of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, which is the home to marine life. Oceans average nearly four kilometers in-depth and are fringed with coastlines that run for about 360,000 kilometres.[4][5]

Marine biology can be contrasted with biological oceanography. Marine life is a field of study both in marine biology and in biological oceanography. Biological oceanography is the study of how organisms affect and are affected by the physics, chemistry, and geology of the oceanographic system. Biological oceanography mostly focuses on the microorganisms within the ocean; looking at how they are affected by their environment and how that affects larger marine creatures and their ecosystem.[6] Biological oceanography is similar to marine biology, but it studies ocean life from a different perspective. Biological oceanography takes a bottom up approach in terms of the food web, while marine biology studies the ocean from a top down perspective. Biological oceanography mainly focuses on the ecosystem of the ocean with an emphasis on plankton: their diversity (morphology, nutritional sources, motility, and metabolism); their productivity and how that plays a role in the global carbon cycle; and their distribution (predation and life cycle).[6][7][8] Biological oceanography also investigates the role of microbes in food webs, and how humans impact the ecosystems in the oceans.[6][9]

Marine habitats

Marine habitats
Coral reefs provide marine habitats for tube sponges, which in turn become marine habitats for fish
Coastal habitats
Ocean surface
Open ocean
Sea floor
Main article:
Marine habitats

Marine habitats can be divided into

demersal habitats. Pelagic habitats are found near the surface or in the open water column, away from the bottom of the ocean and affected by ocean currents, while demersal habitats are near or on the bottom. Marine habitats can be modified by their inhabitants. Some marine organisms, like corals, kelp and sea grasses, are ecosystem engineers
which reshape the marine environment to the point where they create further habitat for other organisms.

Intertidal and near shore

Tide pools with sea stars and sea anemone

tides. A huge array of life can be found within this zone. Shore habitats span from the upper intertidal zones to the area where land vegetation takes prominence. It can be underwater anywhere from daily to very infrequently. Many species here are scavengers, living off of sea life that is washed up on the shore. Many land animals also make much use of the shore and intertidal habitats. A subgroup of organisms in this habitat bores and grinds exposed rock through the process of bioerosion
.

Estuaries

Estuaries have shifting flows of sea water and fresh water.

tides. An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it and with a free connection to the open sea.[10] Estuaries form a transition zone between freshwater river environments and saltwater maritime environments. They are subject both to marine influences—such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water—and to riverine influences—such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The shifting flows of both sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world.[11]

Reefs

Coral reefs form complex marine ecosystems with tremendous biodiversity.
Main article: Coral reef

tropical coral reefs which exist in most tropical waters; however, reefs can also exist in cold water. Reefs are built up by corals and other calcium-depositing animals, usually on top of a rocky outcrop on the ocean floor. Reefs can also grow on other surfaces, which has made it possible to create artificial reefs. Coral reefs also support a huge community of life, including the corals themselves, their symbiotic zooxanthellae
, tropical fish and many other organisms.

Much attention in marine biology is focused on coral reefs and the

global warming could exacerbate this trend.[14][15][16][17]

Some representative ocean animal life (not drawn to scale) within their approximate depth-defined ecological habitats. Marine microorganisms exist on the surfaces and within the tissues and organs of the diverse life inhabiting the ocean, across all ocean habitats.[18]

Open ocean

continental shelves
.
Main article: Pelagic zone

The open ocean is relatively unproductive because of a lack of nutrients, yet because it is so vast, in total it produces the most primary productivity. The open ocean is separated into different zones, and the different zones each have different ecologies.

hadopelagic zones. Zones which vary by the amount of light they receive include the photic and aphotic zones. Much of the aphotic zone's energy is supplied by the open ocean in the form of detritus
.

Deep sea and trenches

A deep-sea chimaera. Its snout is covered with tiny pores capable of detecting animals by perturbations in electric fields.

The deepest recorded

microbes and other lifeforms have been discovered at these locations.[22]

Marine life

Main article: Marine life
Part of a series of overviews on
Marine life
Green turtle
Albatross hovering over the ocean looking for prey
Sea otters

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. For this reason marine biology encompasses not only organisms that live only in a marine environment, but also other organisms whose lives revolve around the sea.

Microscopic life

Main article:
Marine microorganism

As inhabitants of the largest environment on Earth, microbial marine systems drive changes in every global system. Microbes are responsible for virtually all the

nutrients and trace elements.[23]

Microscopic life undersea is incredibly diverse and still poorly understood. For example, the role of viruses in marine ecosystems is barely being explored even in the beginning of the 21st century.[24]

The role of

silicoflagellates
.

fish larvae and sea stars (also called starfish
).

Plants and algae

Main article:
Marine algae and plants

Microscopic algae and plants provide important habitats for life, sometimes acting as hiding places for larval forms of larger fish and foraging places for invertebrates.

Algal life is widespread and very diverse under the ocean. Microscopic photosynthetic algae contribute a larger proportion of the world's photosynthetic output than all the terrestrial forests combined. Most of the niche occupied by sub plants on land is actually occupied by macroscopic algae in the ocean, such as Sargassum and kelp, which are commonly known as seaweeds that create kelp forests.

Plants that survive in the sea are often found in shallow waters, such as the

beach grass
might grow.

Invertebrates

Main article: Marine invertebrates

As on land,

sea squirts or tunicates
. Invertebrates have no backbone. There are over a million species.

Fungi

Main article: Marine fungi

Over 10,000

saprobes on algae, corals, protozoan cysts, sea grasses, wood and other substrata, and can also be found in sea foam.[27] Spores of many species have special appendages which facilitate attachment to the substratum.[28] A very diverse range of unusual secondary metabolites is produced by marine fungi.[29]

Vertebrates

Main article:
Marine vertebrates

Fish

Main article: Fish

A reported

cartilaginous fish, had been described by 2016,[30] more than all other vertebrates combined. About 60% of fish species live in saltwater.[31]

Reptiles

Main article: Marine reptile

ichthyosaurs, evolved to be viviparous
and had no requirement to return to land.

Birds

Main article: Seabird

Birds adapted to living in the

marine environment are often called seabirds. Examples include albatross, penguins, gannets, and auks. Although they spend most of their lives in the ocean, species such as gulls
can often be found thousands of miles inland.

Mammals

Main article: Marine mammal

There are five main types of marine mammals, namely

sirenians such as manatees; pinnipeds including seals and the walrus; sea otters
; and the polar bear. All are air-breathing, and while some such as the sperm whale can dive for prolonged periods, all must return to the surface to breathe.[34][35]

Subfields

The

sea water and the ocean in general, adaptation to a salty environment, and the effects of changing various oceanic properties on marine life. A subfield of marine biology studies the relationships between oceans and ocean life, and global warming and environmental issues (such as carbon dioxide displacement). Recent marine biotechnology has focused largely on marine biomolecules, especially proteins, that may have uses in medicine or engineering. Marine environments are the home to many exotic biological materials that may inspire biomimetic materials
.

Through constant monitoring of the ocean, there have been discoveries of marine life which could be used to create remedies for certain diseases such as cancer and leukemia. In addition, Ziconotide, an approved drug used to treat pain, was created from a snail which resides in the ocean.[36]

Related fields

Marine biology is a branch of

marine science. It also encompasses many ideas from ecology. Fisheries science and marine conservation can be considered partial offshoots of marine biology (as well as environmental studies
). Marine Chemistry, Physical oceanography and Atmospheric sciences are closely related to this field.

Distribution factors

An active research topic in marine biology is to discover and map the

data loggers. Marine biologists study how the ocean currents, tides and many other oceanic factors affect ocean life forms, including their growth, distribution and well-being. This has only recently become technically feasible with advances in GPS and newer underwater visual devices.[37]

Most ocean life breeds in specific places, nests or not in others, spends time as juveniles in still others, and in maturity in yet others. Scientists know little about where many species spend different parts of their life cycles especially in the infant and juvenile years. For example, it is still largely unknown where juvenile sea turtles and some year-1 sharks travel. Recent advances in underwater tracking devices are illuminating what we know about marine organisms that live at great Ocean depths.[38] The information that pop-up satellite archival tags give aids in certain time of the year fishing closures and development of a marine protected area. This data is important to both scientists and fishermen because they are discovering that by restricting commercial fishing in one small area they can have a large impact in maintaining a healthy fish population in a much larger area.

History

Main article: History of marine biology
a dogfish was attached by a cord to a kind of placenta (the yolk sac).[39]

The study of marine biology dates to Aristotle (384–322 BC), who made many observations of life in the sea around Lesbos, laying the foundation for many future discoveries.[40] In 1768, Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin (1744–1774) published the Historia Fucorum, the first work dedicated to marine algae and the first book on marine biology to use the new binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus. It included elaborate illustrations of seaweed and marine algae on folded leaves.[41][42] The British naturalist Edward Forbes (1815–1854) is generally regarded as the founder of the science of marine biology.[43] The pace of oceanographic and marine biology studies quickly accelerated during the course of the 19th century.

HMS Challenger during its pioneer expedition of 1872–1876

The observations made in the first studies of marine biology fueled the

coral reefs.[44] Another important expedition was undertaken by HMS Challenger, where findings were made of unexpectedly high species diversity among fauna stimulating much theorizing by population ecologists on how such varieties of life could be maintained in what was thought to be such a hostile environment.[45]
This era was important for the history of marine biology but naturalists were still limited in their studies because they lacked technology that would allow them to adequately examine species that lived in deep parts of the oceans.

The creation of marine laboratories was important because it allowed marine biologists to conduct research and process their specimens from expeditions. The oldest marine laboratory in the world,

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute was founded in 1930.[47] The development of technology such as sound navigation ranging, scuba diving gear, submersibles and remotely operated vehicles allowed marine biologists to discover and explore life in deep oceans that was once thought to not exist.[48] Public interest in the subject continued to develop in the post-war years with the publication of Rachel Carson
`s sea trilogy (1941-1955).

Further information: Sonic characteristics of marine species

See also

Lists

References

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  14. ^ Bryant, D., Burke, L., McManus, J., et al. (1998) "Reefs at risk: a map-based indicator of threats to the world's coral reefs". World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C.
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Further references

External links

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