Life in the Ocean
- Earth is "incorrectly named" because 71% of it is covered in water and 90% of the biosphere in volume.
- Researchers have studied less than 10 percent of the ocean and no more than 1 percent of the deep ocean floor. This is because of the difficulty of getting to the bottom safely.
- Only 250,000 species have been identified in the ocean, whereas 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 are estimated to still be undiscovered.
- The deep sea tends to have much more nutrients because phytoplankton on the surface deplete their resources.
- Kelp forests occur in cool temperate waters at around 30 meters of depth. They can provide fish and invertebrates with food and shelter from strong currents.
- Between 500 and 1,000 meters below the surface is an oxygen minimum zone, where only a few organisms has adapted to live in the environment.
- All of the ocean communities and creatures that we know best are those nearest shore and much less is know about ones away from the shore.
- Ocean ecosystems have been left out of discussions for preserving the biodiversity.
- 70% of the world's fisheries are fishing at an unsustainable level.
Despite taking up over 71% of the earths surface, the majority of the ocean has not been explored at all. Millions of organisms yet to be discovered because of the lack of resources to get into deep into the ocean. The ocean itself has many different communities, such as coral reefs, sea-grass beds and kelp forests. It's hard to imagine the kind of species that are in the deep ocean because there is no phytoplankton and a lot more nutrients to work with. Oxygen minimum zones are common and have very little diversity in life because few species have adapted to the low oxygen environment. Exploring the ocean will give us more insight on how organisms live in such harsh environments and let us see a lot more of the ocean that is invisible to us.
It makes sense that most of the species and oceanic communities that we know of are near the shores instead of the deep ocean. It does sound crazy that there can be up to 10,000,000 undiscovered species there, a good chunk of it is most likely microlife that may perform similar processes as species on the surface, just in a different way. Although since 10,000,000 is such a large number, there's probably thousands of interesting species that may do things that we have yet to see. It still is amazing that we know more about other planets than our own ocean. As our technology grows maybe one day we can have the opportunity to explore more of the deep ocean and the species that live there.