underwater life essay

.

, .

, , .

, , , , , , .

Smithsonian Ocean

The Deep Sea

Introduction, open ocean zones, seafloor habitats, finding food, tools & technology, at the smithsonian.

Below the ocean’s surface is a mysterious world that accounts for over 95 percent of Earth’s living space—it could hide 20 Washington Monuments stacked on top of each other. But the deep sea remains largely unexplored. As you dive down through this vast living space you notice that light starts fading rapidly. By 650 feet (200 m) all the light is gone to our eyes and the temperature has dropped dramatically. Dive deeper and the weight of the water above continues to accumulate to a massive crushing force. Any light still filtering down has diminished to appear completely black, leaving only animals and bacteria to produce the light found here. By 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), the temperature hovers just below the temperature of your refridgerator.  At this depth, we’ve reached the average depth of the deep-sea floor, a place that may start to get a little muddy. The further we dive down from the surface, the less new food is available, making the fight to survive that much more challenging.  Despite these harsh conditions, there is life—an astounding variety of creatures that will boggle your mind. You can’t dive to the deep ocean on your own, of course, but scientists have a variety of sophisticated technologies to explore this vast frontier.

Are You An Educator?

Oceanographers divide the majority of the ocean midwater into five broad zones. The very deepest depth of the ocean is roughly 2,000 meters deeper than Mount Everest is tall—36,070 feet deep (10,994 m)! Each zone has a different mix of species adapted to its specific light level, pressure, temperature, and community. About three-fourths of the area covered by ocean is deep, permanently dark, and cold. This is the deep sea.

Most are familiar with the surface layer, which extends down 650 feet (200 m) and receives the most sunlight, allowing photosynthetic organisms like phytoplankton to convert sunlight to energy. It is the home of pods of dolphins, schools of fish, and shoals of sharks. Scientists refer to this highly productive area as the epipelagic zone. 

But the majority of the space in the ocean is a dark world. Dive below the epipelagic and you will enter the mesopelagic zone. Also known as the twilight zone, this area receives only faint, filtered sunlight, allowing no photosynthetic organisms to survive. Many animals have adapted to the near-darkness with large eyes and counterillumination . 

Beginning with the bathypelagic zone, the ocean is completely void of light from the sun, moon and stars. Animals create their own bioluminescent light and, if they haven’t lost them, have highly light-sensitive eyes to see the light produced by other animals. The water temperature is near freezing. Travel deeper and you will find the abyssopelagic zone—the abyss. And finally, the deepest reaches of the ocean are found at the bottom of precipitous trenches. These locations venture into the hadalpelagic zone, places so deep only a handful of humans have ever traveled there so far.

Mesopelagic

The area of the ocean between 650 and 3,300 feet (200-1,000 m) is called the mesopelagic. Barely any light filters down to these depths, and yet still life thrives here. Squid, krill, jellies, and fish are super abundant in this zone. About 90 percent of the world’s fish (by weight) live in the mesopelagic—about 10 billion tons of fish. The bristlemouth fish alone may number at about a quadrillion, making them the most numerous family of vertebrates (animals with a backbone) in the world. 

Bathypelagic

The bathypelagic is between 3,300 and 13,100 feet (1,000 and 4,000 m) beneath the ocean surface. It is an area void of light (called aphotic) and at 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius), it is very cold. Moreover, the pressure is over 110 times that at sea level. Creatures in this zone must live with minimal food, so many have slow metabolisms. Many rely on marine snow as their main food source. They are also characterized by squishy bodies and slimy skin. The black hagfish, viperfish, anglerfish, and sleeper shark are common fish that call this zone home. While something like the gulper eel, with its massive expandable gullet, is a rare and amazing sight and could almost be mistaken for an alien. Vampire squid and dumbo octopus also venture to these depths. 

Abyssopelagic

The Abyssopelagic extends from 13,100 to 19,700 feet (4,000-6,000 m) down to the seafloor or abyssal plain. Animals that can withstand the pressures in this depth, which can reach up to 600 times what is experienced at sea level are highly specialized. Tripod fish are an oddity that can be found in this zone. Often found resting on the seafloor, tripod fish can pump fluid into their elongated fins to make them like rigid stilts (or as their name implies, a tripod), sometimes a few feet high. Rattail fish, octopuses , and sea cucumbers are also well adapted to the intense pressure here.

Hadalpelagic

The hadalpelagic is the very deepest part of the ocean that includes the ocean trenches. It extends from 19,700 feet (6,000 meters) to the very bottom of the Mariana Trench at 36,070 feet (10,994 meters). Very little is known about the creatures that live at such depths. In 2018, scientists officially described a snailfish (Pseudoliparis swirei) at 27,000 feet below sea level, the deepest living fish ever found. The snailfish lacks scales, has large teeth, and does not bioluminesce, a departure from what many people envision in a deep-sea fish. It is the only named fish at such depth. A second has been observed on video, however, it has yet to be captured and formally described. Despite the remoteness of the hadalpelagic, humanity still finds a way to interfere—plastic debris has been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench .

Like the open ocean, the seafloor is similarly divided into distinct zones. Right next to the coast is the continental shelf, the submerged part of the continent. This area is characterized by shallow water and mostly exists within the sunlit epipelagic zone. Traveling away from the coast the seafloor will begin to slope down through the mesopelagic and bathypelagic zones into deeper depths. This is the continental slope, the transition between Earth’s continental surface and Earth’s oceanic seafloor. As the slope levels out at the continental rise (roughly 19,700 feet or 6,000 m) it gives way to the abyssal plain, the long stretch that accounts for roughly 70 percent of the world sea floor.

But the ocean floor consists of more than just the flat and seemingly vacant abyssal plain. Pockets of life thrive when food is available, and often these distinct deep sea communities rely on alternate sources of chemical energy that do not originate from the sun—they have figured a way to make do with what they get. 

A remarkable white sponge with brown sea feathers, pink brittle stars, and a pink sea feather in the lower right.

Abyssal Plain

The abyssal plain is the relatively level deep seafloor. It is a cold and dark place that lies between 3,000 and 6,000 meters below the sea surface. It is also home to squat lobsters, red prawns, and various species of sea cucumbers. For these creatures food is scarce most of the time. Bits of decaying matter and excretions from thousands of meters above must trickle down to the seafloor, with only a small fraction escaping the hungry jaws of creatures above. Less than five percent of food produced at the surface will make its way to the abyssal plain. Most of this comes in great pulses as the result of phytoplankton blooms. When the phytoplankton are gone, the animals that grew quickly to eat them die and sink to the seafloor.

Whale Falls

For the majority of the ocean floor large animals are scarce. The little nutrition that rains down from above in the form of marine snow is not nearly consistent enough nor substantive enough to fuel a large living creature (though there are billions of tiny ones). Whale or other large animal deaths are different.

Whale falls occur when a whale dies in surface waters and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Trees, sharks, and large fish can also fall to the seafloor and provide food. The sudden arrival of food prompts creatures from afar to congregate and feast on the fleshy carcass. Once the flesh has been stripped and consumed by predators, bone eaters arrive so that not even the skeleton will remain. In the months and years after a whale fall the site will become the home and food source for millions of creatures.

The skeletal remains of a whale supply a feast for deep sea creatures.

For the first month or so that a whale carcass is on the seafloor it is a buffet for scavengers from afar. Many are attracted by the smell of rotting flesh. Within hours of falling, sleeper sharks, rattail fish, and black hagfish flock to the carcass like moths to a flame. Snow crabs, brittle stars, and squat lobsters scurry their way over, and in the ensuing month these scavengers will consume about 40 to 60 kg of flesh per day (88 – 132 pounds). The feeding frenzy also disperses bits and pieces as well as nutrients into the surrounding seafloor where anemones, sea stars, mollusks, worms, and other crustaceans take advantage of the food. Some whale falls can support a blanket of 45,000 worms per square meter—the highest animal density in the entire ocean.

Soon the skeleton is picked clean, but the fall is far from nutrient depleted. Whale bone consists of roughly 60 percent fat by weight, up to 200 times the amount of nutrients typically found at the seafloor. Specially adapted worms and snails take advantage of this feast by boring into the inner bone with acid and absorbing the fats inside with the help of bacteria. The worms, called Osedax worms , ride ocean currents as larvae and then settle on the exposed bone. The first of these larvae develop into females, with one end tunneling into the bone and forming what looks like roots growing through the bone. The other end grows into a feathered fan that lets them extract oxygen from the water. Larvae that arrive later or land on another worm, become males, but never really grow beyond the larval form. Instead they live within the females’ bodies as parasites—sometimes over a hundred live in one female host. Scientists have found about 25 species of bone eating worms since they were first discovered in 2002, and many more are thought to exist. Some are specialized burrowers that dig within the bone for the fat, while others pick apart the surface layers.

These worms house bacteria within their “roots” that take advantage of the sulfur in the bones to make energy in a process called chemosynthesis.  Other bacteria types grow directly on the bones and feed on the sulfur. Up to 190 different types of these bacteria have been found on a single whale carcass, and up to 20 percent of those are also found living around hydrothermal vents.

No two whale fall communities are the same. The size of the whale, the depth of the seafloor, and the location all contribute to the types of animals that colonize the area and determine how long it takes for the skeleton to disappear. Our knowledge of whale falls comes from few and far between ROV and AUV encounters, so though whale falls are scarce, scientists estimate they exist at every 5 to 16 km in the Pacific Ocean.

Hydrothermal Vents

Deep beneath the ocean’s surface, towers spew scalding water from within the earth’s crust. These are hydrothermal vents. 

Hydrothermal vents exist in volcanically active areas. Seawater makes its way through the cracks in the earth’s crust until it reaches hot magma. As the water heats it absorbs metals like iron, zinc, copper, lead, and cobalt from the surrounding rocks. Hot water rises, carrying these minerals to the surface of the sea floor. There, it meets cool ocean water, an event that sparks chemical reactions and forms solid deposits. Over time the deposits create towers—forming the classic image of a hydrothermal vent. Some spew water filled with black iron sulfide and are aptly named “black smokers,” while others spew white colored elements like barium, calcium, and silicon and are called “white smokers.”

At first inspection, it seems unlikely that anything could live in such an environment—spewing from cracks in the earth’s crust is scalding water that has been heated to temperatures up to 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius), a temperature hot enough to melt lead. These vents are also so deep that they never see a glimmer of light from the sun. Despite these obstacles, clams, mussels, shrimp, and gigantic worms thrive in these habitats. Their existence is thanks to bacteria. 

Animal life at a hydrothermal vent relies on the energy produced by symbiotic bacteria. The bacteria live either inside the bodies or on the surface of their hosts. But unlike most life on earth that uses light from the sun as a source of energy, these bacteria produce energy through a chemical reaction that uses minerals from the vents.

Scientists first learned of these symbiotic relationships through the study of the Riftia tubeworm. Upon first discovering hydrothermal communities in 1977, scientists were perplexed by the diversity and abundance of life. The worm’s blood red plumes filter the water and absorb both oxygen and hydrogen sulfide from the vents. Hydrogen sulfide is normally poisonous, but the Riftia worm has a special adaptation that isolates it from the rest of the body. Their blood contains hemoglobin that binds tightly to both oxygen and hydrogen sulfide. Further investigation into these unique habitats showed that many of the other creatures that live by the vents also rely on symbiotic bacteria. The yeti crab waves its arms in the water to help cultivate bacteria on tiny arm hairs which it then consumes.

Brine Lakes

It seems like an impossibility—coming across a lake at the bottom of the ocean. But due to chemical and physical properties of water, this is, in fact, a reality.

Brine lakes are super salty pools of water that sit on the ocean floor. The extreme saltiness causes significantly denser water than the average ocean water and, like water and air, the two do not mix. The salt difference is so definitive that sitting above the brine lake, you can visibly see the lake’s surface—even waves when the lake is disturbed.

These brine lakes are a remnant of ancient seas that existed when dinosaurs roamed on land. Many brine lakes have been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico. Millions of years ago, during the Jurassic Period, a shallow sea existed where the Gulf of Mexico now sits. Cut off from the rest of the world’s oceans, the sea slowly evaporated, leaving behind a layer of salt up to 5 miles deep in some locations. By the time the ocean returned to that region, sediment had covered the salt, isolating it from the seawater.

But as the Rocky Mountains began to rise and subsequently erode, the extra weight of the sediment flushed into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River was enough to break the seal. Salt is naturally lighter than soil and as it became squeezed by the soil above, it began to rise. Near the earth’s surface it began to mix with the seawater that was able to percolate into the sediment. This mixture though, was still many times the salinity of ocean water. The result is a brine lake.

Brine lakes are deadly for ocean creatures. The salt content is so high that creatures that “fall in” often die. Their carcass, pickled and preserved , serves as a warning of the toxic landscape below. But for many creatures the risk is worth it. A brine lake is also an area high in methane and certain bacteria can use the methane in a chemical reaction to produce energy. Animals like mussels and crabs come to feed on the special bacteria by the lake’s edge, and often there are whole communities that live along the shore.

Along with the Gulf of Mexico, brine lakes have been discovered in the Red Sea and off the coast of Antarctica.

A cold seep is a place on the ocean floor where fluids and gases trapped deep in the earth percolate up to the seafloor. A cold seep gets its name not because the liquid and gas that emerge are colder than the surrounding seawater, but because they are cooler than the scalding temperature of the similar hydrothermal vent. 

Mussels and shrimp at a chemosynthetic cold seep community. Gulf of Mexico.

Cold seeps form at cracks in the earth’s crust. The cracks release buried petroleum-based gas and liquid from deep underground where they formed over millions of years. These liquids and gases are made up of hydrogen and carbon molecules, like methane. It is from these chemicals that cold seep creatures get their energy. Microbes near cold seeps gain energy through chemical reactions, and then pass the energy to symbiotic partners like tubeworms, clams, or mussels. This draws larger predators like octopuses and crabs to the seeps.

Canyons and Seamounts

Like on land, deep canyons can stretch for hundreds of miles across the seafloor. These canyons serve as a habitat where sealife can thrive. The walls, ledges, and bottoms of canyons create a diverse variety of habitats—many of which are steep, and scoured by currents rich in tiny food particles—that enable an array of sea creatures to live there. The rocky ledges are a perfect place for deep sea corals to attach, and the muddy bottom is a soft home for worms and mollusks to burrow. Fish, too, find shelter within the canyon walls, and also a good place to catch a meal.

Canyons are hotspots of life because they are areas of ample nutrition. A canyon acts like a funnel in the ocean, congregating decaying matter that originates from land down to the ocean depths. The geography of a canyon also creates currents of moving water that suspend the amassed nutrition into the water column, often even reaching up into shallower, sunlit depths where photosynthetic algae grow. Krill and crustaceans called amphipods thrive off the phytoplankton, and it is the masses of these zooplankton that attract tuna, swordfish, and sharks to canyons.  

A seamount is an underwater mountain that can rise thousands of feet above the seafloor. Just as canyons funnel water, seamounts also influence the flow of water, often diverting deep currents. They are often found at the edges of tectonic plates where magma is able to rise through the surface crust. When dense, nutrient rich ocean currents hit the seamount they deflect up toward the surface, allowing marine life to thrive on the newly supplied food. Crabs, corals, anemones, sea stars, and many other creatures make the walls of seamounts their home. About 80 commercial species live on seamounts, and many are only found near this habitat.  

Deep Sea Reefs

It may be the last place you’d expect to find corals—up to 6,000 m (20,000 ft) below the ocean’s surface where the water is icy cold and completely dark. Yet believe it or not, lush coral gardens thrive here. In fact, there are as many known species of deep-sea corals (also known as cold-water corals) as shallow-water species.    Like shallow-water corals, deep-sea corals may exist as individual coral polyps, as diversely-shaped colonies containing many polyps of the same individual, and as reefs with many colonies made up of one or more species. They also serve as a habitat for deep sea creatures like sea stars and sharks. Unlike shallow-water corals, however, deep-sea corals don’t need sunlight. They obtain the energy and nutrients they need to survive by trapping tiny organisms in their polyps from passing currents. 

Corals can be found in the deep sea.

Bioluminescence

In a deep, dark world anything that lights up stands out. But in fact, producing light in the deep is the norm rather than the exception. Some creatures produce their own light to snag a meal or find a mate in a process called bioluminescence .

A bright blue ctenophore uses bioluminescence to glow.

Animals can use their light to lure prey towards their mouths, or even to light up the area nearby so that they can see their next meal a bit better. Sometimes the prey being lured can be small plankton, like those attracted to the bioluminescence around the beak of the Stauroteuthis octopus . But the light can also fool larger animals. Whales and squid are attracted to the glowing underside of the cookie-cutter shark, which grabs a bite out of the animals once they are close. The deep-sea anglerfish lures prey straight to its mouth with a dangling bioluminescent barbel, lit by glowing bacteria.

In addition to feeding, creatures of the deep use light in flashy displays meant to attract mates. Or, animals use a strong flash of bioluminescence to scare off an impending predator. The bright signal can startle and distract the predator and cause confusion about the whereabouts of its target. The light can even attract a bigger predator that will eat the attacker. If an animal needs to blend in, bioluminescence can be used to help in camouflage with the use of counterillumination , a display of light that helps them blend into the background.

Flashy displays may seem easy to spot, but in the dark expanse of the deep, distance and the immense area can make even bright lights hard to see. Deep sea animals will often have enlarged eyes that can pick up even the faintest light, ensuring a rare encounter leads to a meal or a mating. The Phronima , an invertebrate resembling Ridley Scott’s Alien, uses two sets of eyes, one large set in front and one on the sides. Research that included Smithsonian scientists found that the large eyes allow it to see at longer distances and the smaller eyes provide low resolution vision of nearly the entire area surrounding them, enabling them to catch anything close by.

An unknown deep sea creature glows using bioluminescence.

Vertical Migrations

In the deep-sea food is scarce, but it is also a great place to hide in the dark away from hungry predators. Some creatures have adapted a way of life that takes advantage of both the plentiful surface waters and the safety of the deep. It’s called diel vertical migration .

As the sun sets, fish and zooplankton make massive migrations from the depths up to the ocean’s surface. Despite their small size (some no bigger than a mosquito), these creatures can travel hundreds of meters in just a few hours. Under the light of the moon they feast on the phytoplankton that grew during the day. Then, when the sun comes out and there is enough light for predators to see them again, the zooplankton return to the deep darkness. Often, this repeats every single day. Diel vertical migrations are likely the largest daily migration on the planet.

And while for many creatures partaking in the migration is a way to avoid predators, others take advantage of the reliable movement of potential prey. One tiny plankton, a foraminfera, waits in the path of the migration and ensnares passing copepods, a migrating crustacean, in a web of protruding spines. A layer of these plankton create a dense mine field for the tiny crustaceans to swim through on their path each day. In the arms race of evolution, it pays to be one step ahead.  

Diel vertical migrations aren’t the only type of movement between the shallows and deep. Tethered to a life at the surface because they require breathable oxygen, many large animals will make impressive dives to the deep sea in search of their favorite foods.  Sperm whales, southern elephant seals, leatherback sea turtles, emperor penguins, and beaked whales are especially good divers. A Cuvier’s beaked whale is known to dive 9,816 feet (2,992 m) deep, and can stay down as long and 3 hours and 42 minutes, making it the deepest diving mammal in the world.

Marine Snow

For much of the deep ocean, food rains down from above in the form of marine snow. The term ‘marine snow’ is used for all sorts of things in the ocean that start at the top or middle layers of water and slowly drift to the seafloor. This mostly includes waste, such as dead and decomposing animals, poop, silt and other organic items washed into the sea from land.

A deep sea squid known as the whiplash squid surrounded in marine snow.

As this material drops deeper and deeper , the particles can grow in size as smaller flakes clump together. The larger size causes them to fall more quickly through the water column—but, even so, the journey to the bottom can take several weeks to years . Scientists have learned more about the travels of marine snow by using sediment traps on the ocean floor. Data from these traps have shown that 815 million tons of carbon reaches the ocean floor every year. These layers of ocean ooze are important carbon sinks—drawing down the decomposing bits of carbon, laying them to rest on the seafloor, and finally burying them.

But not all particles get that far. They are often eaten by fish or marine mammals during their slow fall, just to be digested and pooped out elsewhere in the ocean to begin the cycle all over again. Once the trip is complete, this decomposing hodgepodge can be a welcome food source for animals in deep water and on the sea floor that don’t have reliable food in the sparse darkness. Some animals, such as the vampire squid and its special feeding filaments , have special adaptations to help them better catch and eat the falling particles. The snow is also important to small, growing animals, such as eel larvae , which rely on the snow for months during their development. Marine snow clumps are also swarming with microbes—tiny organisms ranging from algae to bacteria—that form communities around the sinking particles.

Technologies for Exploring the Deep

No place on Earth is as distant or as alien as the deep ocean. But we’re now able to explore more and more parts of this remote realm—thanks to a new generation of incredible underwater vehicles .

Some vehicles—known as human occupied vehicles (HOVs)—carry scientists themselves to the deep sea to see firsthand what’s there. Other kinds of unmanned craft let scientists see and study those places they can’t go. For example, scientists can steer remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) from ships at the surface. A cable links the ships to the ROVs, limiting their mobility. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have no cable, but they need to be pre-programmed. A new breed of hybrid vehicles (HROVs) combines the best features of ROVs and AUVs: They can have a surface operator, or drop the cable and go it alone.

Deep Reef Observation Project

The Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP) is a Smithsonian research program launched to explore marine life and monitor changes on deep reefs in the southern Caribbean. Scientists turn to submarines to explore at depths too great for SCUBA gear. The Curasub is a 5-person manned submersible capable of descending to 1,000 feet. The state-of-the-art sub is equipped with hydraulic collecting arms that allow for the collection of marine life and the deployment of long-term monitoring devices on the deep reef. 

Biological collections from the Curasub off Curaçao have resulted in the discovery of numerous new and rare species of fishes, marine mollusks, echinoderms and crustaceans. This project utilizes the taxonomic expertise of more than a dozen Smithsonian scientists and employs modern molecular tools and digital photography and videography to fully document species and genetic diversity on deep reefs.

Deep Sea Corals

How do you study deep sea coral reefs? With a submarine. Museum curator Andrea Quattrini has spent her career using submarines and remotely operated vehicles to document coral reefs and the species that call these underwater “forests” home. While coral reefs in shallow water are well studied and loved by people, very little is known about their deep sea relatives. We do know that many commercially important species like shrimps, crabs, groupers, rockfish, and snappers rely on deep sea coral reefs for shelter, but this is only based upon a limited number of studies and dives. Scientists, including Quattrini, continue to discover additional species that call deep sea coral reefs home, showing that there is still much to learn about the deep sea. 

Living in the Deep Sea

What does it take to live in the deep sea? Curator Karen Osborn wants to know how and why animals adapt in order to survive in a cold, dark, and pressurized environment. Many animals that live in this largest of the earth's habitats are very bizarre and dramatically different from their closest relatives. For example, some make an extreme effort to see , building huge bulbous eyes that can detect even the smallest glimmer of light, while others completely forfeit any form of sight and instead rely on heightened scent and touch. Since most animal groups have representatives living in the open ocean, learning about the differences in the way these animals live compared to their relatives in shallow water tells us a lot about how this environment changes and shapes the many animals that survive there.  

• Marine Mammals
• Sharks & Rays
• Invertebrates
• Plants & Algae
• Coral Reefs
• Coasts & Shallow Water
• Census of Marine Life
• Tides & Currents
• Waves, Storms & Tsunamis
• The Seafloor
• Temperature & Chemistry
• Ancient Seas
• Extinctions
• The Anthropocene
• Habitat Destruction
• Invasive Species
• Acidification
• Climate Change
• Gulf Oil Spill
• Solutions & Success Stories
• Get Involved
• Books, Film & The Arts
• Exploration
• History & Cultures
• At The Museum

Search Smithsonian Ocean

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Education home
• About NOAA Education
• NOAA in your backyard: Alaska
• NOAA in your backyard: Caribbean
• NOAA in your backyard: Central
• NOAA in your backyard: Great Lakes
• NOAA in your backyard: Gulf of Mexico
• NOAA in your backyard: Mid-Atlantic
• NOAA in your backyard: Northeast
• NOAA in your backyard: Northwest
• NOAA in your backyard: Pacific Islands
• NOAA in your backyard: Southeast
• NOAA in your backyard: Southwest
• Educational mailing lists
• Oct-Dec 2023
• Jul-Sep 2023
• Apr-Jun 2023
• Jan-Mar 2023
• NOAA Sea to Sky: Education resource database
• Ocean acidification
• Ocean currents
• Ocean floor features
• Ocean pollution and marine debris
• El Niño and La Niña
• Space weather
• Weather observations
• Weather systems & patterns
• Carbon cycle
• Changing seasons
• Climate change impacts
• Climate data monitoring
• Aquatic food webs
• Coral reef ecosystems
• Fisheries and seafood
• Life in an estuary
• Marine mammals
• Sea turtles
• Great Lakes ecoregion
• Water cycle
• Watersheds, flooding, and pollution
• Data resources for educators
• Education at home
• Elementary resources
• Hands-on science activities
• Special topics
• Conference resources
• About the education resource collections
• Conservation Service Corp Act Direct Hiring Authority
• Educator opportunities
• Grants & networks
• News and stories

Marine life

Our ocean, coasts, and estuaries are home to diverse living things. These organisms take many forms, from the tiniest single-celled plankton to the largest animal on Earth, the blue whale. Understanding the life cycles, habits, habitats, and inter-relationships of marine life contributes to our understanding of the planet as a whole. Human influences and reliance on these species, as well as changing environmental conditions, will determine the future health of these marine inhabitants. Toxic spills , oxygen-depleted dead zones, marine debris , increasing ocean temperatures, overfishing, and shoreline development are daily threats to marine life. Part of NOAA's mission is to help protect these organisms and their habitats.

Food webs describe who eats whom in an ecological community. Made of interconnected food chains, food webs help us understand how changes to ecosystems — say, removing a top predator or adding nutrients — affect many different species, both directly and indirectly.

Phytoplankton and algae form the bases of aquatic food webs. They are eaten by primary consumers like zooplankton, small fish, and crustaceans. Primary consumers are in turn eaten by fish, small sharks, corals, and baleen whales. Top ocean predators include large sharks, billfish, dolphins, toothed whales, and large seals. Humans consume aquatic life from every section of this food web.

Coral reefs are some of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. Coral polyps , the animals primarily responsible for building reefs, can take many forms: large reef building colonies, graceful flowing fans, and even small, solitary organisms. Thousands of species of corals have been discovered; some live in warm, shallow, tropical seas and others in the cold, dark depths of the ocean.

Seafood plays an essential role in feeding the world’s growing population. Healthy fish populations lead to healthy oceans and it's our responsibility to be a part of the solution. The resilience of our marine ecosystems and coastal communities depend on sustainable fisheries.

Estuaries are areas of water and shoreline where rivers meet the ocean or another large body of water, such as one of the Great Lakes. Organisms that live in estuaries must be adapted to these dynamic environments, where there are variations in water chemistry including salinity, as well as physical changes like the rise and fall of tides. Despite these challenges, estuaries are also very productive ecosystems. They receive nutrients from both bodies of water and can support a variety of life. Because of their access to food, water, and shipping routes, people often live near estuaries and can impact the health of the ecosystem.

Marine mammals are found in marine ecosystems around the globe. They are a diverse group of mammals with unique physical adaptations that allow them to thrive in the marine environment with extreme temperatures, depths, pressure, and darkness. Marine mammals are classified into four different taxonomic groups: cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses), sirenians (manatees and dugongs), and marine fissipeds (polar bears and sea otters).

Sea turtles breathe air, like all reptiles, and have streamlined bodies with large flippers. They are well adapted to life in the ocean and inhabit tropical and subtropical ocean waters around the world. Of the seven species of sea turtles, six are found in U.S. waters; these include the green, hawksbill, Kemp's ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley.

What lies beneath: our love affair with living underwater

How the 1960s craze for oceanic exploration changed our relationship with the planet

I n November 1966, the Gemini 12 spacecraft, carrying two astronauts, splashed down in the Pacific. The four-day mission was a triumph, proving that humans could work in outer space, and even step into the great unknown, albeit tethered to their spacecraft. It catapulted the US ahead of the USSR in the space race.

From then, Nasa’s goal was to beat the Russians to the moon. That meant weeks rather than days in space, in an isolated, claustrophobic environment. There was one perfect way to prepare humans for these conditions: going underwater. The world was gripped. If we could land people on the moon, why not colonise the ocean as well?

Nasa scientists were not the first to dream of marine living. Evidence of submarines and diving bells can be found as far back as the 16th century. The literary grandfather of all things deep, Jules Verne, popularised the idea of a more sophisticated underwater life with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1872, but it was in the 20th century that the fascination really took hold.

In the 1930s, American naturalist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton collaborated on experimental submersibles called bathyspheres which set records for deep diving and opened up the underwater realm of plants and animals to science. Swiss physicist and oceanographer Auguste Piccard created the bathyscaphe (which used floats rather than surface cables) in 1946, and his son, Jacques, was on the record-breaking voyage to explore the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth, in 1960. Auguste also created the mesoscaphe – the world’s first passenger submarine – in 1964.

The craze for living in the depths, rather than merely visiting, started in the 1960s, when Jacques-Yves Cousteau – inventor of scuba, wearer of red woolly hats and inspiration for ze French Narrator in Spongebob – brought the ocean vividly to life for millions around the world through his documentaries about life aboard his vessel Calypso.

To Cousteau, the life subaquatic was, above all, for living. “Being French, he made sure his diving never got in the way of mealtimes,” writes author John Crace of Cousteau’s documentaries . “In fact, food and wine take almost equal precedence with the oceans in these films. No one is ever without a pipe or cigarette in their mouth, either. Except underwater, of course.”

Cousteau channelled this vision of oceanic life into his underwater habitats, known as Conshelf (Continental Shelf Station). George F Bond, the father of saturation diving and head of the US navy’s Man-in-the-Sea programme , approached Cousteau with funding from the French oil industry: they wanted manned colonies at sea in order to help with future exploration.

Together, Bond and Cousteau built three Conshelfs. The first, in 1962, was suspended 10 metres under the water off the coast of Marseilles, but Conshelf II was a starfish-shaped “underwater village” that sat on the seabed proper, 30 metres down in the Red Sea off Sudan. It contained all the accoutrements of la vie louche , including television and radio. Cousteau used it as a base to explore the ocean in his yellow submarine, descending to 300 metres to capture the deepest footage yet recorded.

His team spent 30 days beneath the waves, and in the process changed humanity’s relationship with the ocean by proving that “saturation diving” could allow people to spend long periods underwater. By diving to a certain depth, divers saturate their bodies with the inert gases in air. This allows them to exist at the extreme pressure of the ocean floor. It typically involves breathing a mix of helium and oxygen, to avoid the possibility of the bends and nitrogen narcosis.

Conshelf sparked a craze. Sealab, Hydrolab, Edalhab, Helgoland, Galathee, Aquabulle, Hippocampe – more than 60 underwater habitats were dotted across the seabeds in the late 60s and early 70s from the Baltic to the Gulf of Mexico.

The craze even inspired two British teenagers, Colin Irwin and John Heath, to raise £1,000 to build Glaucus in 1965, which was little more than a cylindrical steel tank weighed down by old railway ties. “We all thought at the time, ‘This is the future’,” Irwin told the BBC on Glaucus’s 50th anniversary. “We may not populate the moon, but we’re going to have villages all over the continental shelf, and we thought it’s about time the British did the same thing.” They dropped it in the waters of Plymouth Sound and spent a week inside.

It is the Nasa missions, however, that remain the most iconic of the 60s underwater living experiments. This is in large part due to the marine biologist Sylvia Earle , one of the most famous explorers of her generation. In 1969, Earle made history with Mission 6, when she and an all-female team of scientists spent two weeks on Nasa’s habitat Tektite (named after meteor remnants on the seabed). This Virgin Islands research facility was for studying aquatic life – marine science, engineering and construction underwater – and small-crew psychology in extreme conditions. The research was for the Apollo missions and the moon landing was just months away.

Built by General Electric, Earle and her team would enter Tektite through what she calls an “underwater door” – emerging as if from a swimming pool into the deep-sea two-up, two-down apartment. It was dry, climate-controlled and comfortable, with carpets, bunks and a hot freshwater shower to wash off the salt. It even had a microwave.

“Nasa had a team of psychologists watching to get insight into behaviour of living in isolation,” says Earle today. “We were there as guinea pigs: our research was on the oceans, their research was on us.”

But Tektite wasn’t just a research station – it was a vision of stylish underwater living. With their scientific gear and Charlie’s Angels wetsuits in their Bond-villain lair, Earle and her team caused a media sensation.

“They called us the aquababes, the aquanaughties, all sorts of things,” Earle recalls with a snort. “We speculated what they would say about the astronauts if they were seen the same way – would they be the astrohunks?”

Habitats such as Glaucus, Conshelf and Tektite were built as tributes to humankind’s abilities, but their true achievement was to spark an entirely different understanding of marine animals. “Back then we could only explore using nets, and just saw dead bodies – not living creatures. Having the continuous interaction allowed us to get to know individual animals,” Earle says. “[In underwater habitats] we could stay, the way you look at bears or birds: we were there for the long haul, 24 hours a day or night. It was possible to see how a little group of damselfish reacted when a predator tried to swipe their eggs, for example.

“You look at a school of fish and they all look alike, but when you really look at them – well, it’s like a bunch of people getting on the New York subway: a fish would say they all look the same, but we know they’re different. Getting to appreciate the individuality of creatures other than humans was a breakthrough for me – it reinforces that you can’t just lump them all together.”

But, in 1973, the world was shaken when Opec declared an oil embargo. Energy prices in the west skyrocketed. At first, the oil shock fuelled even wilder fantasies of a watery future, straight out of science fiction. Architects and designers imagined whole cities underwater, fed by hydropower stations, with deep-sea mining using freight submarines.

Much like living in space, though, it’s extremely difficult to live underwater. Aquanauts spending months in saturation suffered intense pressures on their body tissues – their brains, nervous systems. There were also interpersonal problems. As the marine biologist Helen Scales notes in her 2014 radio documentary The Life Sub-Aquatic :“If you’ve ever lived in a house with anyone, the first thing you do is storm out if you have a quarrel. You’re not going to do that [underwater].”

Advances in robotics changed the game. Much of the research being done by Earle and her colleagues could be more efficiently performed by humans operating devices remotely from the surface. By the end of the 70s, the US government pulled back on its efforts. The moon missions were over. So, it seemed, were the ocean habitats.

A few people refused to let the dream die. One was Australian Lloyd Godson . His habitat, BioSub, experimented with sustainability. Fuelled by solar panels, it featured a support system adapted from work by American high school students, with algae removing the CO2 from his exhalations and creating oxygen. In 2007 he moved in. It worked – sort of. “By day 12 I was lethargic, getting really irritated with people asking questions,” he told the BBC. “My wife told me to call it a day.”

In 2010 Godson spent 14 days underwater at the Legoland aquarium in Germany and used a fixed bicycle to set a world record for generating electricity underwater.

Better funded is the French architect Jacques Rougerie, who has built a career designing underwater habitats and environments. “I had the pleasure of going on Cousteau’s Calypso, participating in expeditions, talking to the crew – and what he created was a fascination for underwater living,” Rougerie says from his office in Paris. “The early explorers opened the chamber of the possible for humanity. When you are underwater you feel like you’re in a new dimension – floating in space, like an astronaut.”

Citing Leonardo da Vinci as an inspiration, Rougerie designs sea museums, underwater laboratories and habitats, and his foundation hosts an annual competition for students to conceive of underwater villages. Rougerie himself has twice lived for long periods underwater, and both times he didn’t want to return to land. “Sadness invades you,” he says. “I was happy to come back and see family, but the first thing you think of is the next experience.”

Rougerie’s ultimate goal remains that old 1960s dream: a proper underwater village, housing up to 250 people. In his vision, these aquanaut settlers would live in osmosis with the ocean, in a self-sufficient, autonomous community running on renewable marine energy such as tidal power, wave sensors and ocean thermals.

Perhaps most ambitious of all is SeaOrbiter , Rougerie’s take on the International Space Station for the ocean. It looks like a floating seahorse: two-thirds of its 51 metres are submerged, with panoramic windows, the lower section acting to stabilise a huge sail-shaped portion above water.

“The goal, above all, is to help the climate and biodiversity by exploring across the grand currents of the ocean,” he says. “To float 24/7 on a permanent structure, a combination of men and robots with a scientific purpose.”

Despite Rougerie’s claims that he has secured Chinese investment, SeaOrbiter appears no closer to pushing off.

Indeed, after all the projects of the past 50 years, only one permanent underwater habitat remains on the entire planet: Aquarius Reef Base , a research station run by Florida International University and which sits 20 metres down on the seabed off the Florida Keys.

Aquarius plays host to a stream of people – scientists, film-makers, astronauts, even Jacques Cousteau’s grandson Fabien – who want to experience time underwater. As part of Nasa’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (Neemo), the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield , famous for singing David Bowie songs aboard the International Space Station in 2013, used Aquarius to train.

But Aquarius is still just a small research station, with room for just six people. In the 21st century, underwater “living” has become almost exclusively the preserve of hotels and resorts that sell “experiences” to guests via underwater glass ceilings and fish windows. The world’s largest underwater restaurant opened in Norway in 2019. Submerged hotels in the Maldives , Fiji , Dubai and Singapore use elevators to take guests below the waterline, and feature amenities such as Poseidon’s undersea chapel (“for a wedding ceremony or vow renewal truly unlike any other”), and are a lot more comfortable than Tektite ever was.

Instead, the architects and scientists who still look to aquatic habitation spend most of their time thinking not about underwater cities, but floating ones. Long the refuge of the poorest city dwellers, such as the vast Makoko floating slum of homes on stilts in Lagos , houses on water have become newly popular as waterfront property prices – and sea levels – have risen across the world.

So far, most of this effort to colonise the water has gone into land reclamation projects, such as the Odaiba island in Tokyo, or South Korea’s Songdo “smart city”. Architects in Dubai even tried to create a scale model of the entire Earth off its coast . However, reclamation is expensive, and requires constant maintenance to keep the ocean from reclaiming the space. Japan’s Kansai airport is sinking.

Architect Koen Olthuis thinks it’s more natural for cities to spread by floating. His firm Waterstudio builds floating buildings, mainly in the Netherlands, to help cities be more resilient. Recently, Olthuis started adding submerged levels to his structures. “In Holland the licences for dwellings on the water are small, but they say nothing about living underwater.”

The goal is partly ecological, Olthuis says. “Ten years ago, it was about proving that a structure did not have a negative effect – but now it’s about also having a positive effect.” He points to the “rigs to reefs” principle where abandoned oil rigs have been transformed into habitats for ocean life. Waterstudio’s Sea Tree builds on that concept: it’s a platform that attracts birds, bees, fish and water plants into a single dense floating structure that can be moved between cities. He says the first Sea Trees have been commissioned by a Chinese developer in Kunming, who was asked to create a tourist attraction after a dam permanently altered the landscape.

The Bjarke Ingels Group last year revealed a concept for a buoyant municipality called Oceanix City – a modular system of floating islands clustered in multiples of six to form a kind of archipelago. Meanwhile, the Seasteading Institute , founded by PayPal’s Peter Thiel and the grandson of the economist Milton Friedman, continues to pursue its libertarian goal of floating communities living outside the boundaries of national law. The Chinese construction giant CCCC has a design similar to Oceanix City, while the architect Vincent Callebaut has imagined a city called Lilypad with a series of oceanic skyscrapers that would house 50,000 people.

“I see blue cities,” says Olthuis. “Not floating cities. Just a city growing over water, taking advantage of the floating structures but in the same pattern as on land – a kind of Venice but floating, that can be used in New York, Miami … any city that’s threatened by water.”

The craze for deep-sea living wasn’t entirely folly, though. Rougerie says that time beneath the waves changes our outlook on the planet, helping inspire the environmental movement. It’s why continues to sponsor the competition to design underwater cities. “The biggest threat to our ocean is man: pollution, chemical and plastic. But I’m convinced that the young have a conscience and they’ll do everything in their power – they’re totally committed and willing to find a solution.”

Sylvia Earle, too, believes that man’s understanding of the universe has been changed by underwater exploration. “In the last 50 years,” she says, “two major things have happened: the expansion of our technology into the skies above – which has given us great insights into the blue speck in the universe that we couldn’t understand any other way – and going deep in the ocean, which has also changed everything.

“It has taught us that life exists everywhere, even in the greatest depths; that most of life is in the oceans; and that oceans govern climate. Perhaps because we’re so terrestrially biased, air-breathing creatures that we are, it has taken us until now to realise that everything we care about is anchored in the ocean.

“It’s the ocean that drives planetary systems – and we have done more harm to our life-support system in the last 50 years than we have in all previous human history,” she says. “If we fail the ocean, nothing else matters.”

• Seascape: the state of our oceans
• Architecture

Most viewed

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Marine ecosystems.

Marine ecosystems are aquatic environments with high levels of dissolved salt. These include the open ocean, the deep-sea ocean, and coastal marine ecosystems, each of which has different physical and biological characteristics.

Biology, Ecology, Conservation, Earth Science, Oceanography

Coral Reef State Park

Coral reefs are a diverse form of marine ecosystem, which in total may account for a quarter of all ocean species. Several types of fish and coral are shown here at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Florida, United States.

Photograph by James L. Amos

Marine ecosystems are aquatic environments with high levels of dissolved salt, such as those found in or near the ocean. Marine ecosystems are defined by their unique biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) factors. Biotic factors include plants, animals, and microbes; important a biotic factors include the amount of sunlight in the ecosystem , the amount of oxygen and nutrients dissolved in the water, proximity to land, depth, and temperature . Sunlight is one of the most important a biotic factors for marine ecosystems . It’s so important that scientists classify parts of marine ecosystems —up to three—by the amount of light they receive. The topmost part of a marine ecosystem is the euphotic zone , extending down as far as 200 meters (656 feet) below the surface. At this depth, there is sufficient light for regular photosynthetic activity. Most marine life inhabits this zone. Below the euphotic zone is the dysphotic zone , which can reach from 200 to as deep as 1,000 meters (656 to 3,280 feet) below the surface. At these depths, sunlight is still available, but only enough to facilitate some photosynthesis. Below the dysphotic zone lies the aphotic zone , which does not receive any sunlight. Types of Marine Ecosystems Scientists divide marine ecosystems into several broad categories, although there are discrepancies depending on the source about what qualifies as a marine ecosystem . The number of marine ecosystems is actively debated. Although there is some disagreement, several types of marine ecosystems are largely agreed on: estuaries, salt marshes , mangrove forests, coral reefs, the open ocean, and the deep-sea ocean. An estuary is a coastal zone where oceans meet rivers. Here, nutrients and salts from the ocean mix with those from the river in regions sheltered from extreme weather . As a result, estuaries are among the most productive places on Earth and support many types of life. In addition, because they are located where rivers join the ocean, estuaries have traditionally supported many human communities and activities like fishing, shipping, and transportation. While estuaries form where ocean meets rivers, salt marshes occur where oceans meet land. These places are rich in nutrients from sediment brought in by the ocean. Marshes are regularly flooded by high tides , making the surrounding ground wet and salty. As a result, the soil is low in oxygen and filled with decomposing matter. These ecosystems are dominated by low-growing shrubs and grasses. Another coastal ecosystem is the mangrove forest. Mangrove forests are found in tropical areas. These ecosystems frequently flood with ocean water, submerging the roots of mangrove trees. The root systems of mangroves filter out salt and sit above ground to access oxygen . These trees provide a home for a variety of species. Animals, such as fish, crabs, shrimp, reptiles, and amphibians, live among the mangrove’s roots while its canopy provides a nesting site for birds. A bit farther out into the tropical sea are coral reefs, euphotic-zone ecosystems built from the exoskeleton secreted by coral polyps. These exoskeletons form complex structures that shelter many different organisms. Coral reefs are extremely diverse ecosystems that host sponges, crustaceans, mollusks, fish, turtles, sharks, dolphins, and many more creatures. By some counts, coral reefs can account for a quarter of all ocean species. Beyond the coral reefs lies the open ocean. Open ocean ecosystems vary widely as the depth of the ocean changes. At the surface of the ocean, the euphotic zone , the ecosystem receives plenty of light and oxygen , is fairly warm, and supports many photosynthetic organisms. Many of the organisms that we associate with marine ecosystems , such as whales, dolphins, octopi, and sharks, live in the open ocean. As the depth of the ocean increases, it gets darker, colder, and with less available oxygen . Organisms living in deep-sea ecosystems within the dysphotic and aphotic zones have unusual adaptations that help them survive in these challenging environments. Some organisms have extremely large mouths that allow them to catch whatever nutrients fall from shallower ocean depths. Others have adapted to get their energy via chemosynthesis of chemicals from hydrothermal vents.

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Production Managers

Program specialists, last updated.

October 19, 2023

User Permissions

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service .

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

Related Resources

Life Below Water: Why it Matters

Oceans cover three quarters of the earth’s surface, contain 97 per cent of the earth’s water, and represent 99 per cent of the living space on the planet by volume..

By The United Nations

A peaceful and quiet place where nature and man become one by Kyunghwa Lee The United Nations

What's the goal here?

To conserve and sustainably use the world's ocean, seas, and marine resources.

Life Underwater (2015) The United Nations

Oceans are our planet’s life support and regulate the global climate system. They are the world’s largest ecosystem, home to nearly a million known species and containing vast untapped potential for scientific discovery.

By Ralph Crane LIFE Photo Collection

Oceans and fisheries continue to support the global population’s economic, social and environmental needs. Despite the critical importance of conserving oceans, decades of irresponsible exploitation have led to an alarming level of degradation.

Jamaica, Discovery Bay, Re-plantetion of corals (2015) The United Nations

Current efforts to protect key marine environments and small-scale fisheries, and to invest in ocean science are not yet meeting the urgent need to safeguard this vast, yet fragile, resource.

Reef scene with hard and soft corals and feather stars, Ha'apai, Tonga (2015) by GRID-Arendal/Glenn Edney Original Source: http://www.grida.no/resources/3530

So what's the problem?

The ocean absorbs around 23% of annual CO 2  emissions generated by human activity and helps mitigate the impacts of climate change. The ocean has also absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat in the climate system. 

The Great Barrier Reef

Ocean heat is at record levels, causing widespread marine heatwaves, threatening its rich ecosystems and killing coral reefs around the world.

Fishing for plastic in Greece - Young Champion of the Earth (2020) by UNEP The United Nations

Increasing levels of debris in the world’s oceans are also having a major environmental and economic impact. Every year, an estimated 5 to 12 million metric tonnes of plastic enters the ocean, costing roughly $13 billion per year – including clean-up costs and financial losses in fisheries and other industries.

Plastic pollution at the beach (2016) by UNEP The United Nations

About 89% of plastic litter found on the ocean floor are single-use items like plastic bags.

By Dmitri Kessel LIFE Photo Collection

About 80% of all tourism takes place in coastal areas. The ocean-related tourism industry grows an estimated US$ 134 billion per year and in some countries, the industry already supports over a third of the labour force.

Beach Litter by Dryft Digital

Unless carefully managed, tourism can pose a major threat to the natural resources on which it depends, and to local culture and industry.

Africa, Kenya, Gazi Bay, Magrove planting in the site of the Mikoko Pamoja Project (2017-12) by Will Baxter The United Nations

How is the ocean connected to our health?

The health of the ocean is intimately tied to our health. According to UNESCO, the ocean can be an ally against COVID19 – bacteria found in the depths of the ocean are used to carry out rapid testing to detect the presence of COVID-19. And the diversity of species found in the ocean offers great promise for pharmaceuticals.

Furthermore, marine fisheries provide 57 million jobs globally and provide the primary source of protein to over 50% of the population in least developed countries.

So what can we do?

For open ocean and deep sea areas, sustainability can be achieved only through increased international cooperation to protect vulnerable habitats. Establishing comprehensive, effective and equitably managed systems of government-protected areas should be pursued to conserve  biodiversity and ensure a sustainable future for the fishing industry.

Tuna Fisherman by Robert W Kelley LIFE Photo Collection

On a local level, we should make ocean-friendly choices when buying products or eating food derived from oceans and consume only what we need. Selecting certified products is a good place to start. 

North Horn, Osprey Reef, Coral Sea, Australia Catlin Seaview Survey

We should eliminate plastic usage as much as possible and organize beach clean-ups.  Most importantly, we can spread the message about how important marine life is and why we need to protect it.

Projections on Sustainable Development Goals and 70th Anniversary of the United Nations by UN Photo/Cia Pak The United Nations

To find out more about Goal #14 and other Sustainable Development Goals visit: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment

The Art of Yazidi Survival

The united nations, stories of thread & ink: preserving yazidi cultural heritage, the healing lens: a photographic journey by yazidi survivors, nobody’s listening: justice for the yazidi people, global conversation 2020, zero hunger mural, composing your future, the future is unwritten: artists for tomorrow introduction, the future is unwritten: rashad salim, ark re-imagined, #theworldwewant.

Press Release

Study in nature: protecting the ocean delivers a comprehensive solution for climate, fishing and biodiversity.

Southern Line Islands

Photograph by Southern Line Islands

Groundbreaking global study is the first to map ocean areas that, if strongly protected, would help solve climate, food and biodiversity crises

London, UK (17 March 2021) —A new study published in the prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature today offers a combined solution to several of humanity’s most pressing challenges. It is the most comprehensive assessment to date of where strict ocean protection can contribute to a more abundant supply of healthy seafood and provide a cheap, natural solution to address climate change—in addition to protecting embattled species and habitats.

An international team of 26 authors identified specific areas that, if protected, would safeguard over 80% of the habitats for endangered marine species, and increase fishing catches by more than eight million metric tons. The study is also the first to quantify the potential release of carbon dioxide into the ocean from trawling, a widespread fishing practice—and finds that trawling is pumping hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean every year, a volume of emissions similar to those of aviation.

“Ocean life has been declining worldwide because of overfishing, habitat destruction and climate change. Yet only 7% of the ocean is currently under some kind of protection,” said Dr. Enric Sala, explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society and lead author of the study, Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food and climate .

“In this study, we’ve pioneered a new way to identify the places that—if strongly protected—will boost food production and safeguard marine life, all while reducing carbon emissions,” Dr. Sala said. “It’s clear that humanity and the economy will benefit from a healthier ocean. And we can realize those benefits quickly if countries work together to protect at least 30% of the ocean by 2030.”

To identify the priority areas, the authors—leading marine biologists, climate experts, and economists—analyzed the world’s unprotected ocean waters based on the degree to which they are threatened by human activities that can be reduced by marine protected areas (for example, overfishing and habitat destruction). They then developed an algorithm to identify those areas where protections would deliver the greatest benefits across the three complementary goals of biodiversity protection, seafood production and climate mitigation. They mapped these locations to create a practical “blueprint” that governments can use as they implement their commitments to protect nature.

The study does not provide a single map for ocean conservation, but it offers a first-in-kind framework for countries to decide which areas to protect depending on their national priorities. However, the analysis shows that 30% is the minimum amount of ocean that the world must protect in order to provide multiple benefits to humanity.

“There is no single best solution to save marine life and obtain these other benefits. The solution depends on what society—or a given country—cares about, and our study provides a new way to integrate these preferences and find effective conservation strategies,” said Dr. Juan S. Mayorga, a report co-author and a marine data scientist with the Environmental Market Solutions Lab at UC Santa Barbara and Pristine Seas at National Geographic Society.

The study comes ahead of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which is expected to take place in Kunming, China in 2021. The meeting will bring together representatives of 190 countries to finalize an agreement to end the world’s biodiversity crisis. The goal of protecting 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030 (the “30x30” target) is expected to be a pillar of the treaty. The study follows commitments by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Commission and others to achieve this target on national and global scales.

Safeguarding Biodiversity

The report identifies highly diverse marine areas in which species and ecosystems face the greatest threats from human activities. Establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) with strict protection in those places would safeguard more than 80% of the ranges of endangered species, up from a current coverage of less than 2%.

The authors found that the priority locations are distributed throughout the ocean, with the vast majority of them contained within the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones of coastal nations.

The additional protection targets are located in the high seas—those waters governed by international law. These include the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (a massive underwater mountain range), the Mascarene Plateau in the Indian Ocean, the Nazca Ridge off the west coast of South America and the Southwest Indian Ridge, between Africa and Antarctica.

"Perhaps the most impressive and encouraging result is the enormous gain we can obtain for biodiversity conservation—if we carefully chose the location of strictly protected marine areas,” said Dr. David Mouillot, a report co-author and a professor at the Université de Montpellier in France. “One notable priority for conservation is Antarctica, which currently has little protection, but is projected to host many vulnerable species in a near future due to climate change."

Shoring up the Fishing Industry

The study finds that smartly placed marine protected areas (MPAs) that ban fishing would actually boost the production of fish—at a time when supplies of wild-caught fish are dwindling and demand is rising. In doing so, the study refutes a long-held view that ocean protection harms fisheries and opens up new opportunities to revive the industry just as it is suffering from a recession due to overfishing and the impacts of global warming.

“Some argue that closing areas to fishing hurts fishing interests. But the worst enemy of successful fisheries is overfishing—not protected areas,” Dr. Sala said.

The study finds that protecting the right places could increase the catch of seafood by over 8 million metric tons relative to business as usual.

“It’s simple: When overfishing and other damaging activities cease, marine life bounces back,” said Dr. Reniel Cabral, a report co-author and assistant researcher with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara. “After protections are put in place, the diversity and abundance of marine life increase over time, with measurable recovery occurring in as little as three years. Target species and large predators come back, and entire ecosystems are restored within MPAs. With time, the ocean can heal itself and again provide services to humankind.”

Soaking up Carbon

The study is the first to calculate the climate impacts of bottom trawling, a damaging fishing method used worldwide that drags heavy nets across the ocean floor. It finds that the amount of carbon dioxide released into the ocean from this practice is larger than most countries’ annual carbon emissions, and similar to annual carbon dioxide emissions from global aviation.

“The ocean floor is the world’s largest carbon storehouse. If we’re to succeed in stopping global warming, we must leave the carbon-rich seabed undisturbed. Yet every day, we are trawling the seafloor, depleting its biodiversity and mobilizing millennia-old carbon and thus exacerbating climate change. Our findings about the climate impacts of bottom trawling will make the activities on the ocean’s seabed hard to ignore in climate plans going forward,” said Dr. Trisha Atwood of Utah State University, a co-author of the paper.

The study finds that countries with the highest potential to contribute to climate change mitigation via protection of carbon stocks are those with large national waters and large industrial bottom trawl fisheries. It calculates that eliminating 90% of the present risk of carbon disturbance due to bottom trawling would require protecting only about 4% of the ocean , mostly within national waters.

Closing a Gap

The study’s range of findings helps to close a gap in our knowledge about the impacts of ocean conservation, which to date had been understudied relative to land-based conservation.

“The ocean covers 70% of the earth—yet, until now, its importance for solving the challenges of our time has been overlooked,” said Dr. Boris Worm, a study co-author and Killam Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “Smart ocean protection will help to provide cheap natural climate solutions, make seafood more abundant and safeguard imperiled marine species—all at the same time. The benefits are clear. If we want to solve the three most pressing challenges of our century—biodiversity loss, climate change and food shortages —we must protect our ocean.”

Additional Quotes from Supporters and Report Co-Authors

Zac Goldsmith, British Minister for Pacific and the Environment, UK

Kristen Rechberger, Founder & CEO, Dynamic Planet

Dr. William Chueng, Canada Research Chair and Professor, The University of British Columbia, Principal Investigator, Changing Ocean Research Unit, The University of British Columbia

Dr. Jennifer McGowan, Global Science, The Nature Conservancy & Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, Yale University

Dr. Alan Friedlander, Chief Scientist, Pristine Seas, National Geographic Society at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawai'i

Dr. Ben Halpern, Director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), UCSB

Dr. Whitney Goodell, Marine Ecologist, Pristine Seas, National Geographic Society

Dr. Lance Morgan, President and CEO, Marine Conservation Institute

Dr. Darcy Bradley, Co-Director of the Ocean and Fisheries Program at the Environmental Market Solutions Lab, UCSB

The study, Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food and climate , answers the question of which places in the ocean should we protect for nature and people. The authors developed a novel framework to produce a global map of places that, if protected from fishing and other damaging activities, will produce multiple benefits to people: safeguarding marine life, boosting seafood production and reducing carbon emissions. Twenty-six scientists and economists contributed to the study.

Study’s Topline Facts

• Ocean life has been declining worldwide because of overfishing, habitat destruction and climate change. Yet only 7% of the ocean is currently under some kind of protection.
• A smart plan of ocean protection will contribute to more abundant seafood and provide a cheap, natural solution to help solve climate change, alongside economic benefits.
• Humanity and the economy would benefit from a healthier ocean. Quicker benefits occur when countries work together to protect at least 30% of the ocean.
• Substantial increases in ocean protection could achieve triple benefits, not only protecting biodiversity, but also boosting fisheries’ productivity and securing marine carbon stocks.

Study’s Topline Findings

• The study is the first to calculate that the practice of bottom trawling the ocean floor is responsible for one gigaton of carbon emissions on average annually. This is equivalent to all emissions from aviation worldwide. It is, furthermore, greater than the annual emissions of all countries except China, the U.S., India, Russia and Japan.
• The study reveals that protecting strategic ocean areas could produce an additional 8 million tons of seafood.
• The study reveals that protecting more of the ocean--as long as the protected areas are strategically located--would reap significant benefits for climate, food and biodiversity.

Priority Areas for Triple Wins

• If society were to value marine biodiversity and food provisioning equally, and established marine protected areas based on these two priorities, the best conservation strategy would protect 45% of the ocean, delivering 71% of the possible biodiversity benefits, 92% of the food provisioning benefits and 29% of the carbon benefits.
• If no value were assigned to biodiversity, protecting 29% of the ocean would secure 8.3 million tons of extra seafood and 27% of carbon benefits. It would also still secure 35% of biodiversity benefits.
• Global-scale prioritization helps focus attention and resources on places that yield the largest possible benefits.
• A globally coordinated expansion of marine protected areas (MPAs) could achieve 90% of the maximum possible biodiversity benefit with less than half as much area as a protection strategy based solely on national priorities.
• EEZs are areas of the global ocean within 200 nautical miles off the coast of maritime countries that claim sole rights to the resources found within them. ( Source )

Priority Areas for Climate

• Eliminating 90% of the present risk of carbon disturbance due to bottom trawling would require protecting 3.6% of the ocean, mostly within EEZs.
• Priority areas for carbon are where important carbon stocks coincide with high anthropogenic threats, including Europe’s Atlantic coastal areas and productive upwelling areas.

Countries with the highest potential to contribute to climate change mitigation via protection of carbon stocks are those with large EEZs and large industrial bottom trawl fisheries.

Priority Areas for Biodiversity

• Through protection of specific areas, the average protection of endangered species could be increased from 1.5% to 82% and critically endangered species from 1.1% to and 87%.
• the Antarctic Peninsula
• the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
• the Mascarene Plateau
• the Nazca Ridge
• the Southwest Indian Ridge
• Despite climate change, about 80% of today’s priority areas for biodiversity will still be essential in 2050. In the future, however, some cooler waters will be more important protection priorities, whereas warmer waters will likely be too stressed by climate change to shelter as much biodiversity as they currently do. Specifically, some temperate regions and parts of the Arctic would rank as higher priorities for biodiversity conservation by 2050, whereas large areas in the high seas between the tropics and areas in the Southern Hemisphere would decrease in priority.

Priority Areas for Food Provision

• If we only cared about increasing the supply of seafood, strategically placed MPAs covering 28% of the ocean could increase food provisioning by 8.3 million metric tons.

The Campaign for Nature works with scientists, Indigenous Peoples, and a growing coalition of over 100 conservation organizations around the world who are calling on policymakers to commit to clear and ambitious targets to be agreed upon at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China in 2021 to protect at least 30% of the planet by 2030 and working with Indigenous leaders to ensure full respect for Indigenous rights.

Media Contact

The National Geographic Society is a global nonprofit organization that uses the power of science, exploration, education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world. Since 1888, National Geographic has pushed the boundaries of exploration, investing in bold people and transformative ideas, providing more than 15,000 grants for work across all seven continents, reaching 3 million students each year through education offerings, and engaging audiences around the globe through signature experiences, stories and content. To learn more, visit www.nationalgeographic.org or follow us on Instagram , LinkedIn, and Facebook .

Articles on Underwater exploration

Displaying all articles.

Underwater cultural heritage: why we’re studying ‘orphaned objects’ to work out which shipwrecks they came from

Natali Pearson , University of Sydney ; Martin Polkinghorne , Flinders University ; Nia Naelul Hasanah Ridwan , Flinders University , and Zainab Tahir , Flinders University

Shipwrecks teem with underwater life, from microbes to sharks

Avery Paxton , National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Classic literature still offers rich lessons about life in the deep blue sea

Jonathan Bate , Arizona State University

They say we know more about the Moon than about the deep sea. They’re wrong

Prema Arasu , The University of Western Australia ; Alan Jamieson , Newcastle University , and Thomas Linley , Newcastle University

Friday essay: how ancient beliefs in underwater worlds can shed light in a time of rising sea levels

Patrick D. Nunn , University of the Sunshine Coast

AI spots shipwrecks from the ocean surface – and even from the air

Leila Character , The University of Texas at Austin

Explorer Robert Ballard’s memoir finds shipwrecks and strange life forms in the ocean’s darkest reaches

Suzanne OConnell , Wesleyan University

Robot jellyfish could help service offshore windfarms

Francesco Giorgio-Serchi , The University of Edinburgh

What are lost continents, and why are we discovering so many?

Maria Seton , University of Sydney ; Joanne Whittaker , University of Tasmania , and Simon Williams , University of Sydney

What happens now we’ve found the site of the lost Australian freighter SS Iron Crown, sunk in WWII

Emily Jateff , Flinders University and Maddy McAllister , James Cook University

Underwater microscope provides new views of ocean-floor sea creatures in their natural setting

Jules Jaffe , University of California, San Diego ; Andrew Mullen , University of California, San Diego , and Tali Treibitz , University of Haifa

Why are we still searching for the Loch Ness monster?

Alessandro Palci , Flinders University

Just how little do we know about the ocean floor?

Jon Copley , University of Southampton

What is it really like under the Indian Ocean?

Joanne Whittaker , University of Tasmania and Simon Williams , University of Sydney

Searching underwater for MH370 is a shot in the dark

Robin Robertson , UNSW Sydney

Flash photography safe for White’s seahorse

University of Technology Sydney

Underwater volcanoes discovered North of Fiji

Australian National University

Related Topics

• Archaeology
• Flight MH370
• Marine biology

Top contributors

Associate professor, University of Tasmania

Associate Professor, University of Tasmania

Professor of Geography, School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine Coast

Professor of Ocean Exploration and Science Communication, University of Southampton

Founding Professor of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research centre, The University of Western Australia

Research Associate in Evolutionary Biology, University of Adelaide

Research Oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego

Ph.D. Student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, San Diego

Head of Marine Imaging Lab, University of Haifa

Associate professor, University of Sydney

Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, Wesleyan University

Research Associate, Marine Ecology, Newcastle University

Adjunct lecturer in archaeology, Flinders University

Senior Curator - Maritime Archaeology, James Cook University

Chancellor's Fellow in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, The University of Edinburgh

• X (Twitter)
• Unfollow topic Follow topic

Goal 14: Life Below Water

SDG14: Life Below Water

Can you imagine a world without oceans to swim in and explore? Oceans are home to seahorses, dolphins, whales, corals, and many other living creatures. Oceans are our planet’s life support as they provide water, food and help regulate the weather. Oceans also provide jobs for more than 3 billion people who depend on marine biodiversity for their livelihood. If we do not stop polluting our oceans, there will be severe problems that affect every person and living creature on the planet.

Pollution poses the greatest threat to our planet and the lives of future generations! Do you ever ask yourself where all the plastic bottles and bags go after you use them? Every year an estimated 5 to 12 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean. Carbon emissions produced by human activities, like driving cars, are causing the oceans to warm and increase the acid level in the water. This is extremely bad for animals and organisms that live in the sea, as the acid can break the organisms’ shells and damage coral reefs.

All of us need to help to protect our seas. You can suggest to your parents not to use plastic bottles at home, but use a filter instead, if your tap water allows. Next time you go to the beach, bring a reusable bag to collect garbage, so it does not enter the water.

Our new reading list for SDG14: Life Below Water explains the importance of the ocean and the resources it provides to all of us, teaching you what you can do to keep our seas clean. The books will take you on underwater journeys and introduce you to many unique sea creatures while helping to understand what problems affect ocean’s health.

Table of Contents

Sign up for updates

SDG Book Club Chapters

More recommendations

On the importance of reading

Reading list

The Big Book of the Blue

The Big Book of the Blue explores the underwater world through several themes such as looking at animals in danger, learning how to spot creatures at the beach, and discovering how to do our part to save sea life. Filled with fascinating facts, this book’svivid illustrations bring to life some of the most interesting underwater animals.

Author and Illustrator: Yuval Zommer | ISBN: 9780500651193 | Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Heads and Tails: Underwater

This book encourages children’s imagination and curiosity, as the illustrations let them guess what creatures live in the world’s waters. It’s a great conversation starter about how pollution endangers these animals and what each child can do to help protect life under water and keep our oceans, lakes, and rivers clean.

Author and Illustrator: John Canty | ISBN: 9781536214604 | Publisher: Candlewick

Water: A Deep Dive of Discovery

This comprehensive yet accessible exploration of water will help young readers understand many aspects of one of our planet’s most precious resources – and how they can protect it. A friendly water droplet character guides children through topics ranging from melting and freezing to the ways in which water literally shapes the Earth.

Author: Christy Mihaly |  Illustrator: Mariona Cabassa | ISBN: 9781646862801 | Publisher:  Barefoot Books

Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean’s Most Fearless Scientist

A story about Eugenie Clark who fell in love with sharks from the first moment she saw them at the aquarium and couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than studying these graceful creatures. Through her accomplishments, she taught the world that sharks were to be admired rather than feared and that women can do anything they set their minds to.

Author: Jess Keating |  Illustrator: Marta Álvarez Miguéns  | ISBN: 9781492642046 | Publisher:  Sourcebooks Explore

If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden

Sea gardens have been created by First Peoples on the Northwest Coast of North America for more than three thousand years. These gardens consist of stone reefs that are constructed at the lowest tide line, encouraging the growth of clams and other marine life on the gently sloped beach. This story follows a young child and an older family member who set out to visit a sea garden early one morning, as the lowest tides often occur at dawn.

Author: Kay Weisman |  Illustrator: Roy Henry Vickers  | ISBN: 9781554989706 | Publisher:  Groundwood Books

Reading is a great way to better understand what people from across the globe struggle with in their everyday lives, and it helps us reflect on our own situation. But reading is just the first step: now it’s time to share your book club experiences and how you plan to take action. Each month, we will feature a couple of book clubs on our blog , so get ready to share your story through social media, by using #SDGBookClub and tagging @UNPublications.

We know it can be difficult to stay at home to protect ourselves and our loved ones from COVID-19. This is why we created a new guide on how to organize your own SDG Book Club online to connect with your friends and family while sharing the joy of reading. We look forward to hearing about your experience on social media using #SDGBookClub.

Help us spread the word by downloading our promotional materials. You will find a horizontal banner, bookmark, placard and easy-to-print sign-up sheet for your friends, family and community to join the SDG Book Club!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the sdg book club.

The SDG Book Club aims to use books as a tool to encourage children ages 6-12 to interact with the principles of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through a curated reading list ofbooks from around the world related to each of the 17 SDGs in all six official UN languages—Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

How do you choose books for the reading list?

A selection committee works together to make the final selection for each of the 17 SDGs, in all six official UN languages —Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. The selection committee consists of members from the United Nations, International Publishers Association (IPA), the International Federation of Librarian Associations (IFLA), European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBA), International Authors Forum (IAF), and International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).

What sorts of books will be considered for this reading list?

Fiction, non-fiction, and other genres that our panel thinks will help educate children about SDGs will be considered.

What is the target age for the reading list?

The reading list is meant for children ages 6-12. However, we encourage parents, educators, and everyone who is interested to read the selected books and help children understand the importance of the SDGs.

How often is the reading list updated?

The reading list will be published during the first week of every month for 17 months, starting with Goal 1: No Poverty in April 2019 and culminating with Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals in September 2020 for the 5th anniversary of the SDGs.

Can I sign-up for email updates?

Yes. Sign up on our homepage to get a monthly email on news and updates. Your privacy is important to us so we would never share your information with third parties or spam your inbox.

Do you sell books here?

No. We do not intend to sell or promote the sale of the books featured in the reading list. If you chose to, you can buy the books online, wherever books are sold, or get a copy at your local bookstore or library.

How do I participate in the conversation via social media?

You can post your thoughts and images on social media using the hashtag #SDGBookClub . Please tag/follow us on Twitter  and Facebook.

Is there a book club meeting near me which I can join?

Yes, there are book club meetings taking place all over the world. Check back for a link to the list! (Coming soon)

How can host my own book club meeting and add it to the list of events?

People can host book club meetings around the world and share their photos via #SDGBookClub. If you would like to organize a public book club meeting, we recommend contacting your local book store, library or school and set it up with them. Please share the planned event on social media using #SDGBookClub and we will add it to the list of events.

I have some thoughts. How do I send feedback?

You can post feedback on our Facebook page or write an email to: [email protected] .

Can I make recommendations for the reading list?

We sincerely appreciate your interest. However, we are not currently accepting recommendations.

What other actions can I take to promote the SDGs?

There are actions that you can take beyond just reading the books.

A/ Help your kids to create a poster with a photo or drawing and interesting facts about their favourite character(s) of the book.

B/ Design a reading scavenger hunt for kids using drawings and pictures instead of questions and help them search for things mentioned in the book.

C/ Help your kids write a letter to the local government representative and tell them what you learned in the book and ask them what action(s) they are taking toward a specific Goal.

D/ Organize a parent-child facilitated book discussion for younger kids. Invite your child’s friends and their parents to discuss a book from the reading list at your local library or children’s book store.

E/ Spread the word on social media, using the hashtag #SDGBookClub. We’d love to feature your pictures/videos on our social media.

What else can I do to teach children about the SDGs?

You can find plenty of Student Resources here . You will find other books aimed at children, as well as the SDG board game. The game aims to help teach children around the world about the Sustainable Development Goals in a child-friendly and straightforward way.

Read to a Child campaign : A global campaign on reading to children to encourage literacy and global citizenship, incorporating the priorities youth and quality education. It is planned to take place in September 2020. More information to come. Please sign up to stay informed.

The International Publishers Association (IPA)  is a federation of publishing associations from around the world. The main mandate of the IPA is to promote and defend copyright, support the freedom to publish, promote literacy and reading. IPA is an accredited NGO in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN. IPA supports the SDGs and works particularly closely with WIPO and UNESCO.

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. Founded in 1927 in Edinburgh, Scotland at an international conference, we celebrated our 90th birthday in 2017. We now have more than 1,300 Members in nearly 150 countries around the world. IFLA was registered in the Netherlands in 1971.

The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY)  is a non-profit organization that represents an international network of people from all over the  world who are committed to bringing books and children together. Today IBBY comprises 79 National Sections worldwide.

The European & International Booksellers Federation (EIBF)  represents national booksellers associations in the European Union and beyond. EIBF Members in turn have in membership booksellers of all kinds: brick and mortar bookshops, online bookshops, independents, chains.

The Bologna Children’s Book Fair (BCBF)  is the most important international trade fair of the children’s publishing industry. With over 50 years of experience, BCBF has succeeded in bringing together a unique and diverse global audience: the result is the world’s premium copyright business hub when it comes to publishing with an extra core that extends to all multi-media content for children.

SDG Book Club Chapters Around the World

Our SDG Book Club is expanding and we are excited to see SDG reading lists for children from around the world. In addition to the SDG Book Club in the UN’s six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) there are now chapters in other languages. Visit the SDG Book Club Chapters listed below.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

In the Oceans, the Volume Is Rising as Never Before

A new review of the scientific literature confirms that anthropogenic noise is becoming unbearable for undersea life.

By Sabrina Imbler

Although clown fish are conceived on coral reefs, they spend the first part of their lives as larvae drifting in the open ocean. The fish are not yet orange, striped or even capable of swimming. They are still plankton, a term that comes from the Greek word for “wanderer,” and wander they do, drifting at the mercy of the currents in an oceanic rumspringa.

When the baby clown fish grow big enough to swim against the tide, they high-tail it home. The fish can’t see the reef, but they can hear its snapping, grunting, gurgling, popping and croaking. These noises make up the soundscape of a healthy reef, and larval fish rely on these soundscapes to find their way back to the reefs, where they will spend the rest of their lives — that is, if they can hear them.

But humans — and their ships, seismic surveys, air guns, pile drivers, dynamite fishing, drilling platforms, speedboats and even surfing — have made the ocean an unbearably noisy place for marine life , according to a sweeping review of the prevalence and intensity of the impacts of anthropogenic ocean noise published on Thursday in the journal Science . The paper, a collaboration among 25 authors from across the globe and various fields of marine acoustics, is the largest synthesis of evidence on the effects of oceanic noise pollution.

“They hit the nail on the head,” said Kerri Seger, a senior scientist at Applied Ocean Sciences who was not involved with the research. “By the third page, I was like, ‘I’m going to send this to my students.’”

Anthropogenic noise often drowns out the natural soundscapes, putting marine life under immense stress. In the case of baby clown fish, the noise can even doom them to wander the seas without direction, unable to find their way home.

“The cycle is broken,” said Carlos Duarte, a marine ecologist at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and the lead author on the paper. “The soundtrack of home is now hard to hear, and in many cases has disappeared.”

Drowning out the signals

In the ocean, visual cues disappear after tens of yards, and chemical cues dissipate after hundreds of yards. But sound can travel thousands of miles and link animals across oceanic basins and in darkness, Dr. Duarte said. As a result, many marine species are impeccably adapted to detect and communicate with sound. Dolphins call one another by unique names. Toadfish hum. Bearded seals trill. Whales sing.

Scientists have been aware of underwater anthropogenic noise, and how far it propagates, for around a century, according to Christine Erbe, the director of the Center for Marine Science and Technology at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and an author on the paper. But early research on how noise might affect marine life focused on how individual large animals responded to temporary noise sources, such as a whale taking a detour around oil rigs during its migration.

The new study maps out how underwater noise affects countless groups of marine life, including zooplankton and jellyfish . “The extent of the problem of noise pollution has only recently dawned on us,” Dr. Erbe wrote in an email.

The idea for the paper came to Dr. Duarte seven years ago. He had been aware of the importance of ocean sound for much of his long career as an ecologist, but he felt that the issue was not recognized on a global scale. Dr. Duarte found that the scientific community that focused on ocean soundscapes was relatively small and siloed, with marine mammal vocalizations in one corner, and underwater seismic activity, acoustic tomography and policymakers in other, distant corners. “We’ve all been on our little gold rushes,” said Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter in England and an author on the paper.

Dr. Duarte wanted to bring together the various corners to synthesize all the evidence they had gathered into a single conversation; maybe something this grand would finally result in policy changes.

The authors screened more than 10,000 papers to ensure they captured every tendril of marine acoustics research from the past few decades, according to Dr. Simpson. Patterns quickly emerged demonstrating the detrimental effects that noise has on almost all marine life. “With all that research, you realize you know more than you think you know,” he said.

Dr. Simpson has studied underwater bioacoustics — how fish and marine invertebrates perceive their environment and communicate through sound — for 20 years. Out in the field, he became accustomed to waiting for a passing ship to rumble by before going back to work studying the fish. “I realized, ‘Oh wait, these fish experience ships coming by every day,’” he said.

Marine life can adapt to noise pollution by swimming, crawling or oozing away from it, which means some animals are more successful than others. Whales can learn to skirt busy shipping lanes and fish can dodge the thrum of an approaching fishing vessel, but benthic creatures like slow-moving sea cucumbers have little recourse.

If the noise settles in more permanently, some animals simply leave for good. When acoustic harassment devices were installed to deter seals from preying on salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago in British Columbia, killer whale populations declined significantly until the devices were removed, according to a 2002 study .

These forced evacuations reduce population sizes as more animals give up territory and compete for the same pools of resources. And certain species that are bound to limited biogeographic ranges, such as the endangered Maui dolphin, have nowhere else to go. “Animals can’t avoid the sound because it’s everywhere,” Dr. Duarte said.

Even temporary sounds can cause chronic hearing damage in the sea creatures unlucky enough to be caught in the acoustic wake. Both fish and marine mammals have hair cells, sensory receptors for hearing. Fish can regrow these cells, but marine mammals probably cannot.

Luckily, unlike greenhouse gases or chemicals, sound is a relatively controllable pollutant. “Noise is about the easiest problem to solve in the ocean,” Dr. Simpson said. “We know exactly what causes noise, we know where it is, and we know how to stop it.”

In search of quiet

Many solutions to anthropogenic noise pollution already exist, and are even quite simple. “Slow down, move the shipping lane, avoid sensitive areas, change propellers,” Dr. Simpson said. Many ships rely on propellers that cause a great deal of cavitation: Tiny bubbles form around the propeller blade and produce a horrible screeching noise. But quieter designs exist, or are in the works.

“Propeller design is a very fast-moving technological space,” Dr. Simpson said. Other innovations include bubble curtains, which can wrap around a pile driver and insulate the sound.

The researchers also flagged deep-sea mining as an emergent industry that could become a major source of underwater noise, and suggested that new technologies could be designed to minimize sound before commercial mining starts.

The authors hope the review connects with policymakers, who have historically ignored noise as a significant anthropogenic stressor on marine life. The United Nations Law of the Sea B.B.N.J. agreement , a document that manages biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, does not mention noise among its list of cumulative impacts.

The U.N.’s 14th sustainable development goal, which focuses on underwater life, does not explicitly mention noise, according to Dr. Seger of Applied Ocean Sciences. “The U.N. had an ocean noise week where they sat down and listened to it and then went on to another topic,” she said.

The paper in Science went through three rounds of editing, the last of which occurred after Covid-19 had created many unplanned experiments: Shipping activity slowed down, the oceans fell relatively silent, and marine mammals and sharks returned to previously noisy waterways where they were rarely seen. “Recovery can be almost immediate,” Dr. Duarte said.

Alive with sound

A healthy ocean is not a silent ocean — hail crackling into white-crested waves, glaciers thudding into water, gases burbling from hydrothermal vents, and countless creatures chittering, rasping and singing are all signs of a normal environment. One of the 20 authors on the paper is the multimedia artist Jana Winderen , who created a six-minute audio track that shifts from a healthy ocean — the calls of bearded seals, snapping crustaceans and rain — to a disturbed ocean, with motorboats and pile driving.

A year ago, while studying invasive species in sea grass meadows in waters near Greece, Dr. Duarte was just about to come up for air when he heard a horrendous rumble above him: “a huge warship on top of me, going at full speed.” He stayed glued to the seafloor until the navy vessel passed, careful to slow down his breathing and not deplete his tank. Around 10 minutes later, the sound ebbed and Dr. Duarte was able to come up safely for air. “I have sympathy for these creatures,” he said.

When warships and other anthropogenic noises cease, sea grass meadows have a soundscape entirely their own. In the daytime, the photosynthesizing meadows generate tiny bubbles of oxygen that wobble up the water column, growing until they burst. All together, the bubble blasts make a scintillating sound like many little bells, beckoning larval fish to come home.

Explore the Animal Kingdom

A selection of quirky, intriguing and surprising discoveries about animal life..

Scientists say they have found an “alphabet” in the songs of sperm whales , raising the possibility that the animals are communicating in a complex language.

Indigenous rangers in Australia’s Western Desert got a rare close-up with the northern marsupial mole , which is tiny, light-colored and blind, and almost never comes to the surface.

For the first time, scientists observed a primate in the wild treating a wound  with a plant that has medicinal properties.

A new study resets the timing for the emergence of bioluminescence back to millions  of years earlier than previously thought.

Scientists are making computer models to better understand how cicadas  emerge collectively after more than a decade underground .

Essay on Life Below Water

Students are often asked to write an essay on Life Below Water in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Life Below Water

Introduction.

Life below water is a world full of wonder and mystery. It is home to a diverse array of creatures, from tiny plankton to giant whales.

Importance of Life Below Water

Marine life plays a vital role in the world’s ecosystem. It provides food, regulates climate, and contributes to the air we breathe.

Threats to Marine Life

However, human activities like pollution, overfishing, and climate change are threatening life below water. These actions disrupt the balance and can lead to the loss of species.

Conservation Efforts

It’s crucial to protect marine life. Conservation efforts include creating marine reserves, reducing pollution, and promoting sustainable fishing.

We must respect and protect life below water. It’s not just about the creatures in the sea, but our survival too.

250 Words Essay on Life Below Water

The importance of life below water.

Life Below Water, a phrase that encapsulates the vast, diverse, and often unexplored world beneath the ocean’s surface, is an essential element of our planet’s ecosystem. It is home to millions of species, many of which are yet to be discovered and plays a critical role in regulating the Earth’s climate.

Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem

The marine ecosystem is a treasure trove of biodiversity, teeming with a multitude of species that range from the smallest plankton to the largest mammal – the Blue Whale. This rich biodiversity is a crucial contributor to the global food chain, supporting millions of human lives. Moreover, it acts as a buffer against climate change by absorbing large amounts of CO2.

Threats to Oceanic Life

Despite its importance, life below water faces numerous threats. Overfishing, pollution, and climate change are the primary culprits, leading to habitat destruction and species extinction. The bleaching of coral reefs, a critical habitat for many marine species, is a glaring example of the impact of these threats.

The Need for Conservation

Conservation of life below water is not just an environmental issue, but also a socio-economic one. Healthy oceans are vital for sustainable fishing, tourism, and even medicine. Therefore, it’s crucial to advocate for sustainable practices, strict regulations on marine pollution, and the establishment of marine protected areas.

In conclusion, life below water is a vital component of our planet’s health and prosperity. It is our collective responsibility to ensure its conservation for the benefit of future generations.

500 Words Essay on Life Below Water

Life below water is a realm of existence that is as fascinating as it is crucial to the overall balance of our planet. This underwater world, covering about 71% of the Earth’s surface, is home to a diverse array of species and ecosystems, playing a vital role in maintaining the planet’s health and survival.

The Biodiversity of Underwater Life

The underwater ecosystem is a vibrant and diverse world teeming with life. From the microscopic plankton, the foundation of the aquatic food chain, to the colossal blue whales, the ocean’s biodiversity is staggering. Coral reefs, often referred to as the rainforests of the sea, host approximately 25% of all marine species. These ecosystems, despite only covering less than 0.1% of the ocean’s floor, are hotspots of underwater biodiversity, providing shelter, food, and breeding grounds for numerous species.

The Role of Oceans in Climate Regulation

Oceans act as the Earth’s thermostat, regulating the global climate and weather patterns. They absorb about 30% of the carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming. The ocean’s currents distribute heat around the planet, maintaining a balance that allows diverse ecosystems to flourish. Phytoplankton, tiny marine plants, contribute significantly to this process by absorbing carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and releasing oxygen. In fact, they are responsible for producing over half of the world’s oxygen, highlighting the ocean’s role in sustaining life not only underwater but also on land.

Threats to Life Below Water

Despite its importance, life below water faces numerous threats. Overfishing, pollution, and climate change are among the most pressing issues. Overfishing depletes fish populations faster than they can reproduce, disrupting the food chain and leading to a decline in overall marine biodiversity. Pollution, particularly plastic pollution, is another significant threat, with millions of tons of plastic waste ending up in the ocean each year, causing harm to marine life.

Climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions, leads to ocean warming and acidification, both of which have devastating impacts on marine life. Coral reefs are particularly vulnerable, with mass bleaching events and die-offs becoming increasingly common as the oceans warm.

The Path Forward

Addressing these threats requires concerted global action. Sustainable fishing practices, stricter pollution controls, and ambitious climate action are all necessary to protect life below water. The global community must recognize the intrinsic value of the ocean’s biodiversity and the essential role it plays in supporting life on Earth.

In conclusion, life below water is a complex, diverse, and vital part of our planet. It plays a crucial role in climate regulation, supports a vast array of species, and provides resources upon which human societies depend. However, it is under threat from human activities. As we move forward, it is essential that we take steps to protect and preserve this remarkable world beneath the waves.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Water Conservation and Management
• Essay on Sources of Water
• Essay on Water Is Life

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Writing Underwater

Writing can be a great friend in the face of loss. It can capture a fleeting moment, thought or sensation, or the meaning of an object, and pin it down on paper before it escapes the grasp of memory. 

But sometimes the opposite is true, and the act of writing seems to overwrite or undercut the very essence of the thing you were trying to catch. You read back what you’ve written and that ungraspable spark of life you hoped to capture is nowhere to be found. When this happens in my writing, I’m reminded of this sparkling passage from Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own :

Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?  

… sure enough, when she does lay her thought out on the riverbank, like that fleeting moment or meaning or sensation I try to lay out on the page, it seems curiously small and insignificant—like a fish out of water. The scraps of writing that make up Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons read, to me, like fish darting underwater, still full of life. When I read them, I feel as though I have been plunged underwater too, and must learn to hold my breath long enough to glimpse whatever thing it is they briefly brush against. Stein’s writing is difficult to read because she is effortfully resisting using language as a hook to capture its prey and haul it up onto the bank. Watch how her words brush against these clothes, for instance:

A PETTICOAT. A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.

A SHAWL. A shawl is a hat and hurt and a red ballon and an under coat and a sizer a sizer of talks.  A shawl is a wedding, a piece of wax a little build. A shawl.  Pick a ticket, pick it in strange steps and with hollows. There is hollow hollow belt, a belt is a shawl.  A plate that has a little bobble, all of them, any so.  Please a round it is ticket.  It was a mistake to state that a laugh and a lip and a laid climb and a depot and a cultivator and little choosing is a point it. 

A LONG DRESS. What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current. What is the wind, what is it. Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.  

In this month's prompt we ask how could your writing brush against something you hold dear, and resist hauling it out of the water to pin onto the page?

Here is a method you could try:

1. Choose a special object, sensation, or moment, and begin by writing a list of a mixture of words, sentence fragments, and full sentences: 

• What other things does your object resemble? Or, what other moments or sensations does it bring to mind? 
• Where does your object belong? Where is it at home?
• What events, actions or gestures do you associate with it? 
• What shape is your object? What shape is it nearly? What shape is it not? And its colours, textures and scents? 
• What are its opposites? 

2. Now, how is your object getting on? Is it still breathing? Still swimming? Might your words be drawing too close? Try to try to pull back slightly, and let your description unspool. Add to your list some associations that lie a little further away: 

• Those other things, moments, sensations, actions or gestures you have already listed: what do they bring to mind? What feelings, what times of your life or of history, what further memories do they evoke in you?  
• Do you feel at home among these associations? Do they unsettle you? 
• If you speak more than one language, which are in play here?   
• What tone of voice do they deserve? Are they observations? Facts? Wishes? 

3. Next, think about structure. Stein’s phrases often evade familiar grammatical structures. Sometimes they seem to evade sense altogether. Is your grammar tightly wrapped around your object? Could you loosen it a little, to give it room to breathe, room to dart and swim through the dark waters of imagination almost unobserved? For your object, and your experience of it, where is the balance between sense and life? 

4. Finally, which associations are most immediate to your object, and which are further away? This might help to order your writing. Perhaps your writing can read like a bloom of associations, dense at the beginning then drifting apart. Perhaps it is richest at the centre, with its edges getting hazy. Perhaps it builds up, loosely at first, then tighter and tighter. Perhaps in the end, you do capture your object after all. With regret? With relish? With relief? 

We hope that you might find some inspiration in this week's writing prompt but as always if you would like to write something else about your life - a diary entry, poem, your reflections on something else about your life at the moment - we'd be delighted to read whatever you would like to send. To go directly to the submission page and send us your writing, click here.   

Guest writer

Dr Tamarin Norwood

This month's guest prompt was created by writer, artist and grief researcher Tamarin Norwood . Tamarin is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Drawing Research Group, Loughborough University, where she is writing a book on metaphor and neonatal loss. She is also a visiting early career research fellow at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, and researcher at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing, University of Oxford where she convenes the Lives in Medicine research network .

She gained her doctorate in Fine Art as a Clarendon scholar at the University of Oxford in 2018. Her scholarly publications focus on representation and loss in drawing; her related prose fiction, poetry and artwork have been published and shown widely including with the BBC World Service, Art on the Underground, Wellcome Collection, ICA Philadelphia, MOCCA Toronto and Tate Britain. Her book Mourning Lines comes out this year with Ma Bibliothèque.

If you would like to hear more about Tamarin's current project, she features in the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing's podcast series, Biography and Beyond. She speaks about the book she is writing about her son, Gabriel, who died shortly after his birth. The episode is called: Writing a very brief life.

Dolphin Ecology: Understanding their Role in the Ocean Ecosystem

• By: Wildlife Blogging
• Date: January 29, 2023
• Time to read: 9 min.

Welcome to Dolphin Ecology! In this blog, we’ll explore the fascinating underwater world and uncover the role that dolphins play in our ocean’s ever-changing ecosystem . Along the way, we’ll examine these intelligent creatures’ unique behaviors and social structures and how a better understanding of their environment can help us protect these beloved animals.

So let’s dive right in – after all, there’s so much more to learn about our flippered friends!

Introduction to Dolphin Ecology

As mammals , dolphins are well-adapted to life in an aquatic environment. Dolphins live in groups and have complex social structures and communication. They inhabit the world’s oceans and rivers, living in temperate, tropical, and polar climates, occupying shallow coastal and deep oceanic regions.

Scientists have studied dolphins over the years to understand their ecological roles within marine ecosystems better. Dolphins consume a wide variety of fish species as food, including herrings, anchovies, mullets, and codfish, as well as various cephalopods (such as squid). They also feed on crustaceans such as shrimp and crabs.

Dolphins can be a major source of predation on certain species within their habitat. They can therefore shape the population dynamics of either prey or predator species by influencing the availability of resources at different levels within the food chain or web.

Further research has also revealed that they play an essential role in maintaining balance in oceanic food webs by lowering competition between commercially valuable fish stocks. For example, one study revealed that dolphins increase catches of albacore tuna by forcing them towards fishing vessels where they can be more easily harvested from the sea surface.

Dolphins interact with other animals in their habitats, such as sharks, whales, turtles, and even other dolphin species, with varying degrees of aggression. These interactions play a role in maintaining a balance between predator/prey relationships while also reducing conflicts between different animal populations by ensuring resources are shared among competing species within a habitat through increased predation pressure kept upon any single animal species.

Dolphin Habitats and Behaviors

Dolphins are wide-ranging cetaceans in almost all aquatic habitats, from shallow coastal regions to deep ocean trenches. Their behavior is highly dynamic and intelligent and can be adapted to different environments. The range of behaviors observed in dolphins includes migrating long distances, socializing with other species members, hunting for food, communicating with sophisticated vocalizations, and even recognizing themselves in mirrors .

The primary habitats of dolphins are the warm coastal waters of the world’s tropical and subtropical oceans; however, many species are now adapted to cooler water temperatures. Dolphins prefer large bodies of water with plentiful food and lower human activity or disturbance that disrupts their lives. Their home ranges can vary widely depending on their abundance of resources such as prey fish or drinking water.

Dolphins extensively use sonic signals to communicate with one another and navigate through the water column in search of schooling prey fish or mates. Using echolocation clicks and creaks emitted from their melons (forehead region) , they can sense objects from various distances around them, which is essential for efficient navigation through dense underwater foliage or dangerous obstacles. Additionally, underwater acoustic communication exists between individual dolphins and entire pods or families for foraging purposes.

Some dolphin communities demonstrate complex patterns related to reproduction, including:

• Monogamous relationships
• Cooperative breeding systems such as life-long male alliances that form to guard access to certain females within a herd
• Synchronized breeding cycles within groups of related females
• Seasonal shifts in social structure depending on varying environmental conditions like food availability or sea surface temperatures during particular times of year give rise to group migrations over large distances spanning oceans and seas.

Threats to Dolphin Populations

Humans are the most significant threat to dolphin populations and a major cause of their decline. The many pressures from human activities on dolphin populations include commercial fishing, pollution, habitat destruction, boat traffic, climate change, and capture for captivity .

Commercial Fishing: Fisheries that rely on large nets to catch fish can quickly become a life-threatening entanglement for dolphins migrating through the area. Thousands die each year when they become trapped in nets or are left unable to eat due to plastic litter in the ocean. In areas where the dolphin population overlaps with fisheries operations, dolphins may compete with commercial species for food resources leading to decreased reproduction rates in healthy dolphin populations.

Pollution: As contaminants such as agricultural runoff and industrial waste accumulate in parts of the ocean, it affects both habitats and the health of marine animals like dolphins while reducing their food supply sources. Pollutants such as heavy metals have been found in stranded dolphins at high concentrations, proving that humans impact these creatures even in oceans away from where pollutants were initially released into waterways.

Habitat Destruction: Many factors contribute to the degradation of the world’s coasts, including urban development and pollutants from industries like oil drilling and shipping. Dolphins’ preferences for shallow water near coastlines make them particularly vulnerable to this loss of habitat caused by human activities meaning few places to reproduce or find new sources of food without competing with other species who might hunt them instead.

Boat Traffic: With ships traveling around the world increasingly powered by oil and diesel, which gives off emissions that can increase air temperatures near bodies of water, boats driving through an area at high speeds displace unsuspecting mammals like dolphins, often resulting in injuries or death among their population numbers due direct contact with vessels or indirectly by propeller blades cutting into them during collisions caused by careless navigational routes taken during timed races conducted offshore too close alongside coastal lines under less experienced navigators not familiar with local body guidelines mandated by governing authorities.

Climate Change: Global warming has posed another challenge to dolphins living near coastal areas in particular – fluctuating temperatures can cause changes in weather patterns, creating more frequent storms as well as newer depths which disrupt natural pathways previously taken when migrating towards different areas when trying to restock themselves with food lacking elsewhere further up or downcoast according to their ability source within an acceptable distance range set beforehand depending various factors encountered sporadically encountered over time leading search patterns contributing overall mobility accepted amongst peers living amongst same social groups over extended periods without too much interruption separations barring incidents beyond control affecting otherwise established itineraries pattern typically followed before alteration.

Capture For Captivity: Dolphins are captured from the wild not only commercially but also specifically for public display purposes providing entertainment-oriented venues amusement parks seeking fill quotas mandated government regulations applied regulating transport internationally far away those initially taken locations therefore changing original place dwelling causing unimaginable distress initially disrupting natural migratory efforts necessary sustain species longterm prior being placed new homes drastically different previous existence realistically diminishing chances self sufficiency realistically returning allotted times periods customarily allowed destination facilites reinstated back wild prompting rescue efforts cooperate countless advocacy campaigns spreading awareness influence protect denizens environment threatened posed dangers extinction occurring event incidences permitted unrestricted access previously unfamiliar experience daily routine challenging cope adjust often confused scared process completely understand start lasting.

Conservation Efforts for Dolphins

Several conservation initiatives have been launched in the last several decades to help protect dolphins. One of the most important is The International Whaling Commission’s regulations preventing whaling ships from targeting dolphins , as they are known to be taken by accident in nets and harpoons. The US Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), enacted in 1972, further protects all marine mammals within US waters.

Other international initiatives, such as the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for Cetaceans and Their Habitats in the Pacific Islands Region (Pacific Cetaceans MoU), are also boosting conservation efforts for dolphins. These agreements focus on protecting traditional habitats and reducing threats to species through increased international collaboration and awareness networks.

Within individual countries, efforts are also being made to protect dolphins by:

• Creating marine sanctuaries or reserves dedicated solely to dolphin species; this ensures their habitats remain free from any pollutants and disruptors.
• Placing national laws that criminalize wild dolphin captivity – or more broadly set standards for animal care – is another way for countries to promote their conservation within their borders actively.

Interactions Between Dolphins and Other Species

Interactions between dolphins and other species may be either positive, harmful, or mutually beneficial . These interactions can affect the abundance and distribution of both the species involved in an interaction and the ocean habitat in which they live.

Positive interactions are those in which dolphins benefit another species. An example of positive interaction is when dolphins herd schools of fish toward shore to aid fishermen with their catch. In this process, humans and fish benefit from increased food sources and ease of access.

Negative interactions occur when one species imposes a cost on another species to gain a benefit for itself. For example, dolphin predation on fish or contaminated coastal waters from offshore drilling can negatively impact other aquatic species that depend on unpolluted ecosystems for survival.

Mutually beneficial interactions occur when two different species form a symbiotic relationship to their mutual advantage. Examples include:

• Dolphin nursing behavior – in which adult female dolphins look after orphaned calves – or
• Cooperative hunting between bottlenose dolphins and zebrafish foraging for large prey like jellyfish or squid.

Through these behaviors, both species can benefit from increased food sources and improved safety from predators while in groups together compared to if they were alone.

Human Impact on Dolphin Ecosystems

Humans have long been intrigued by dolphins’ interactions with us and the natural environment. Unfortunately, our activities are increasingly having adverse effects on dolphin populations worldwide . Some of these impacts are direct, such as hunting or trapping dolphins for meat, oil, or entertainment purposes. Other indirect impacts occur when activities such as fisheries management cause change to their environment that reduces their food availability or alters habitats in a way that harms them.

Habitat loss is a significant factor in human-related dolphin population declines. Pollution from chemicals and human sewage can hurt the health of individual dolphins or contaminate their food sources and lead to shorter lifespans and lowered reproductive success . Increased ocean traffic from commercial ships has also been linked to disruption of communication between dolphins, elevated stress levels for marine mammals, hearing damage from loud noise levels, and even collisions with large vessels. Additionally, unintended bycatch of mammals in fishing nets is an emerging concern for some populations of dolphins which can negatively affect local population growth rates if left unmanaged.

Climate change poses an additional threat to many dolphin species by:

• Elevating sea temperatures
• Reducing oxygen availability in waters where they live
• Intensifying weather patterns like hurricanes that can damage coral reef habitats where they feed or reproduce
• Acidifying oceans that can decrease shellfish availability through changing pH values
• Decreasing other food species by raising metal concentrations they might ingest while feeding on invertebrates

All these threats culminate into higher mortality rates that significantly reduce the size of existing school numbers if left unmanaged effectively into the future.

The Benefits of Protecting Dolphin Ecosystems

Dolphins are integral to the marine ecosystem, providing various beneficial services to their surroundings. Protecting dolphins and their habitats helps support the health of our oceans and provides advantages for humans and other ocean creatures. Here are just a few of the reasons why it’s essential to preserve these magnificent animals and their habitats:

• Balanced trophic levels : Through predation on lower-level species, some dolphin populations help control abundant prey species, allowing species at higher trophic levels to remain healthy by preventing population crashes induced by competition. These population reductions increase resources available to other predators at higher trophic levels, leading to a more balanced ocean food web with enhanced sustainable fisheries.
• Improved water quality : As apex predators in marine environments, dolphins play an essential role in maintaining water quality by consuming top-level species that may have accumulated elevated concentrations of pollutants, such as heavy metals or PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl). Without dolphins in these ecosystems, pollutant accumulations could reach high enough concentrations that negatively impact other species or limit recreational opportunities due to water contamination.
• Enhanced recreation : Dolphins serve as environmental ambassadors for connecting people with nature and can be an attraction for tourists looking for educational experiences about marine ecosystems, which can help fund conservation efforts through increased revenue from recreational activities such as whale-watching tours or visits to dolphin sanctuaries . Additionally, since healthy populations of apex predators indicate the health of their environment, their presence can also indicate that water quality is suitable for safe recreational activities such as swimming and fishing.

In conclusion, dolphins play an intricate role in the ocean ecosystem. By hunting and controlling prey populations, dolphins maintain balance in the food web, serve as indicators for environmental health, and even provide essential nutrients that promote coral growth.

Unfortunately, human activities threaten their presence in coastal areas and oceans worldwide, from a decrease in their food supply to increased levels of ocean debris and contaminants that can be toxic to them .

The continued protection of dolphin habitats is essential for healthy marine life and for promoting sustainable fishing practices to ensure ecosystem balance.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Previous Post

Hedgehogs in the Wild: Understanding Their Ecological Role

Exploring the world of wild bison.

Related Posts

Diving into the Wild: The Secrets of the Mighty Crocodile

Crocodiles – one of the most fascinating and feared creatures on earth. These ancient reptiles have been around for millions of years and are a living link to the dinosaur era. With their powerful jaws, stealthy movements, and ability to thrive in both land and water, crocodiles have captivated human curiosity for centuries. In this…

Wild Kangaroos Unveiled: Exploring Their Habitat, Behavior, and More!

Kangaroos are iconic animals that have captured the world’s imagination with their unique physical characteristics and behaviors. Found in the diverse landscapes of Australia, these marsupials are a fascinating subject for wildlife enthusiasts and curious minds alike. In this article, we will explore the world of kangaroos and provide a deeper understanding of their behavior,…

Wild Possum Management: A Guide to Understanding, Removing, and Controlling Virginia Opossums (Didelphis virginiana)

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on managing opossums. These unique creatures, also known as Virginia opossums, are commonly found in North America and can often cause conflicts with human populations. The aim of this article is to provide a thorough understanding of the Virginia opossum, including its biology, behavior, and potential impacts on human communities….

Paragraph on Life Underwater- by Anand

Here is your paragraph on Life Underwater!

Introduction:

The realm below the surface of the water where the water remains in a natural state like in oceans, ponds, lakes etc. form the underwater. Almost three-quarters of the surface of the Earth is covered by water. Humans are engaged in a number of activities conducted underwater like scuba diving, research etc. But however, almost a majority of the underwater still remains unexplored and is expected to have several million undiscovered species of flora and fauna.

Characteristics of Underwater Life:

Man cannot survive underwater because there is too much pressure at that level which makes breathing extremely difficult. The density of water also causes many difficulties at that level. As the underwater depth increases, the visible light starts diminishing. The colour spectrum is speedily altered with increase in depth. In greater depths underwater, the temperature remains very low because of minimal heat energy reaching that level. Sound also travels almost four times faster in that level.

The vast number of plant species underwater forms a beautiful ecosystem. The plants which stay underwater depend upon the light coming from the sun for their growth. They also draw the atmospheric carbon dioxide from the air above and convert them into oxygen. The flora below the surface of the water adds to the aesthetic beauty. These plants sometimes span vast lengths below the surface of the ocean.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

The microscopic organisms which remain in the sun-lit areas of the underwater surface are called phytoplankton. They depend upon the minerals for survival. Phytoplankton serves as the basic food of the aquatic animals. Other creatures existing underwater are fish, sharks, whales, sea snakes, jellyfish, smaller aquatic animals etc.

These creatures have built-in gills for breathing and their eyes enable them to look forward as well as sideways. Some of the creatures found underwater are carnivorous in nature and eat other aquatic animals for their survival.

Richness of Underwater Life:

The life underwater is no less rich than the life on the surface of the water or the terrestrial life. The aesthetic beauty of underwater life is one of the prominent features. Coral reefs are splendid examples of the aesthetic beauty of underwater life. These span the length which extends to kilometers at a stretch. The underwater life also provides man with a variety of minerals and other resources for consumption. Terrestrial life has certain disadvantages which are absent in the life underwater.

Conclusion:

Life underwater is one of the most exciting things in the world. The same is characterized by plants which exist in a wide variety, aquatic animals which are both dangerous and sober, microscopic organisms which are the basic food of the animals. Even the largest mammal in the world, the blue whale, resides in the oceans. Thus, life underwater is a part of the life on earth.

Related Articles:

• Paragraph on Life without Plants- by Anand
• Short essay on Forestand wild life resources of India
• Short Notes on the Rich Heritage of Flora and Fauna in India
• Paragraph on Life of a Fisherman – by Anand