Ocean Habitats

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Ocean Habitats

• Marine Biology
• Astoria High School
• 2005

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The Big Picture

• 4 main basins Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic
• but basins are recycled every 1000 yrs via
  deepwater currents
• average depth - 3.7 Km
• covers 70.5 of earth's surface but the
  distribution is not even across globe
• this is significant as heat sink - for example,
  southern New Zealand warmer than here

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Topography

• Seafloor topography

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Topography

• 8 of ocean bottom is continental shelf
• Majority of productivity is over shelves

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Distribution of shelves
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2 Primary Divisions of Ocean Habitat

• Benthic - bottom of ocean
• Pelagic - water mass

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Primary divisions
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(No Transcript)
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BENTHIC DIVISION
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Spray (or splash) zone (supralittoral)

• narrow band of marginal habitat
• ocean influence - spray from breaking waves

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Intertidal (littoral)

• very important
• region between highest and lowest tides

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Shelf (sublittoral or subtidal)

• INNER shelf Maximum low tide level to bottom of
  photic zone
• from kelp zone out to point where attached or
  benthic plants cannot live
• OUTER shelf bottom of photic zone to shelf
  break
• 100-200 m
• no attached plants

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Deepsea

• Bathyal
• shelf break to abyssal plain (to 4000 m)
• Abyssal (4000 to 6000 m)
• Hadal - sides/bottoms of trenches (6000 to 11000
  m)

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PELAGIC DIVISION

• Neritic - over continental shelf (0-200 m)
• Oceanic - water over slopes and abyss
• open ocean