Portal:Marine life

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A male whale shark at the Georgia Aquarium.

The Marine Life Portal

Killer whales (orcas) are highly visible marine apex predators that hunt many large species. But most biological activity in the ocean takes place with microscopic marine organisms that cannot be seen individually with the naked eye, such as marine bacteria and phytoplankton.

Marine life, sea life, or ocean life is the plants, animals, and other organisms that live in the salt water of seas or oceans, or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. At a fundamental level, marine life affects the nature of the planet. Marine organisms, mostly microorganisms, produce oxygen and sequester carbon. Marine life, in part, shape and protect shorelines, and some marine organisms even help create new land (e.g. coral building reefs).

Marine invertebrates exhibit a wide range of modifications to survive in poorly oxygenated waters, including breathing tubes as in mollusc siphons. Fish have gills instead of lungs, although some species of fish, such as the lungfish, have both. Marine mammals (e.g. dolphins, whales, otters, and seals) need to surface periodically to breathe air. (Full article...)


Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in 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. (Full article...)

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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. The timing of blooms of the algae is especially important for supporting higher trophic levels at times of the year when light is low and ice cover still exists. Sea ice algal communities are mostly concentrated in the bottom layer of the ice, but can also occur in brine channels within the ice, in melt ponds, and on the surface. (Full article...)
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  • ... If sharks don’t keep on swimming they sink to the seabed.
  • ... the Beluga Whale's milkfat is so high, the calf gains up to 2 kilograms per day on the diet. It is so fatty that the colour is green.
  • ... Basking sharks have huge livers of up to 2000 kg in weight.
  • ... all whales and dolphins have the remains of the pelvis, but it is reduced to two small bones at the rear of the animal.
  • ... In 2004, while snorkelling in Australia, Luke Tresoglavic was bitten by a small wobbegong that refused to let go. He had to swim to the shore and drive to get help with the shark still attached to his leg.
  • ... common dolphins, which are often seen off South Africa’s east coast, can occur in schools of several thousand. The biggest school on record was estimated to consist of about 15,000 dolphins!

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Electron microscope image of the compound eye - the eyes are deep black in the living animal
Electron microscope image of the compound eye - the eyes are deep black in the living animal
Photo credit: Gerd Alberti and Uwe Kils

The Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a species of krill found in the Antarctic waters of the Southern Ocean. Antarctic krill are shrimp-like invertebrates that live in large schools, called swarms, sometimes reaching densities of 10,000 - 30,000 individual animals per cubic meter.

Although the uses for and reasons behind the development of their massive black compound eyes (pictured above) remain a mystery, there is no doubt that Antarctic krill have one of the most fantastic structures for vision seen in nature.

Krill can shrink in size from one molt to the next, which is generally thought to be a survival strategy to adapt to scarce food supplies (a smaller body needs less energy, i.e., food). However, the animal's eyes do not shrink when this happens. The ratio between eye size and body length has thus been found to be a reliable indicator of starvation.

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