Marine Bio Essay

Question: The oceans harbor a wide variety of living organisms, each exhibiting adaptations for survival in their particular marine niches.  First analyze the relationship between structure and function in the living organisms studied this semester.   Then compare and contrast representative members of the major marine animal phyla in terms of structure, adaptation, lifestyle, and evolutionary history.

This right here is a picture of the marine food web. This shows how all of the animals rely on others for survival. Every organism has their own niche. A niche is sort of like a clique or a group of the same types of  organisms.

Plankton: Plankton are a diverse group of organisms that live in the water column and cannot swim against a current. They provide a crucial source of food to many large aquatic organisms, such as fish and whales. Without the plankton many of these animals would not be able to survive because many fish rely of other fish for food and if the ocean fish don't eat then the whales and other larger fish will suffer.

Types of Plankton:

Phytoplankton , autotrophic, prokaryotic or Eukaryota algae that live near the water surface where there is sufficient light to support photosynthesis. also, cyanobacteria, dinoflagellates and coccolithophores.
Zooplankton, small protozoans or metazoans that feed on other plankton and telonemia. Some of the eggs and larvae of larger animals, such as fish, crustaceans, and annelids, are included here.
Bacterioplankton, bacteria, which play an important role in organic material down the water column

Ocean Fish:
Ocean fish are just the fish that live in the ocean, these are one of the main providers for all of the other creatures. Pelagic fish are a main fish in the ocean. These fish usually travel in schools. This is important for the other fish because they need food to eat.

All organisms have different adaptations such as what they eat, where they live, who they fit in with. Over time fish have changed drastically, between their physical appearance, adaptations and much more. They have changed with their looks a lot they have evolved a lot over time with how they protect themselves and their schools around them too.  

All organisms have different adaptations such as a shark and a penguin. Sharks are organisms that have developed over time. The picture below shows how the evolution of a shark has changed over time.

This shows how the shark started out. It looks kind of like a dinosaur when it started out. Over time it evolved to having fins instead of feet, and instead of a long bill with teeth they now have a shorter snout with sharp teeth. Another animal that has evolved over time was the penguin. Penguins now live in cooler habitats and eat mostly fish that they catch in the ocean. Penguins have tall bodies, and shorter beaks where as years ago they had fatter and sat on their bottoms a lot and had a longer beak. All organisms have different adaptations depending on what they need and how their bodies adapt to certain climates and surroundings. All animals need different things to survive, that's just how it is. With out animals and evolution the world would not be where it is today, we need animals to survive.   

Protecting Marine Wildlife

1. What role does the marine wildlife and nature play in your life?
2. How does the use of marine resources impact you on a personal level?
3. Specifically, what new thoughts do you have about marine resources and the way they are used by people?

1. Marine wildlife plays a huge role in an everyday life.  Animals help us in nature by doing many things. They reproduce to create amazing animals. Animals in the ocean also help the other animals in the ocean because they can be food for them. Wildlife affects my life as well. This is because the ocean provides us with many things like fish fir food. It also gives us a nice place to go in the summer to sit by the water. I love being in nature and love being near the ocean and all of the marine wildlife. It makes me feel happy and relaxed. 

2. The ocean faces many issues. One thing that the ocean faces is oil spills. Oil spills happen and you really cant do much to clean it all up. They can take better precautions to prevent them from happening. Oil spills are bad for the ocean. It sits at the bottom and kills some of the marine species that live in it. Another thing that effects me on a personal level is the amount of over fishing that takes place in our oceans. Over fishing is when big fisheries collect a bunch of fish, but when they don't want those fish they just drop the hundreds of fish that they just killed back into the ocean. This is a problem because fish cant eat the thousands of dead fish that get dropped into the ocean from the fisheries. 

3. I have so many new thoughts on marine resources. I had always thought that sea world was a good and fun place to be. After watching Black Fish my thoughts are so different. The fact that people take those whales from the oceans, and then take the babies away from their families are is so sad. I do not like sea world at all anymore. I will never go back their and i would never bring my children to a place where they take whales and keep them in a small cage for their lives. It is wrong to keep a whale locked up like that. 

Whale Watching

Whale Watch
On the whale watch field trip yesterday we saw so many whales. It took so long to get out there to actually see whales. I didn't think we would end up seeing any at all. Once we finally got 26 miles out into the ocean we saw so many whales! We saw a lot of whales logging in the water. We saw about 30 whales. We saw one fin whale on the way out to the whales and we saw a couple more fin whales on out there too. A lot of the whales made bubble rings. A bubble ring is when the whales put a bunch of fish in a ring. The bubbles make an actual ring and the fish cant get out, then one whale come up and eats all of the fish then all of the other whales pop up out of the water. It was also cool to see that when we looked down we could see schools of fish swimming around the boat. The whales were all so big, they would slap there fins on the water and it made a cool noise. I also liked the blow holes. I thought it was neat how they can spray the remaining water out of their holes. That was my first whale watch and it was awesome to see so many whales at once.  

Aquarium

This week we took a trip to the aquarium. I saw many different things while we here. I learned a lot about the different fish and the different animals that were there. One animal that I thought was very interesting were the penguins. They had very cool features, I thought it was cool how they ate. It looked like they just put the fish in their mouth and they swallowed it. Another animal that i loved were the jelly fish. I liked the ones that had the electricity running through them, I thought it was cool how you could actually see it. I also think its interesting how they move they just kind of wander around and move there legs. Another fish that i loved looking at was the fish that looked like a unicorn. It had a horn on its head and swam at the top of the tank and just went back and fourth.

Another animal that i enjoyed while on the trip were the sting rays. I loved the touch tank and how you could put your hands in and they swim up and touch your hand. They had a very odd but cool texture to them. The sting rays were very slimy and gooey. I liked it tough it was different. The sea turtle was another one of my favorite animals to look at. They were all so big. They ate a lot of food too. Another thing that I liked was all of the sea anemones. They were all so unique in there own way. They were different sizes, shapes, colors. It was so cool to see them and how they swayed back in fourth and the fish swam around them too. The last thing that i thought was cool was the tank that had the florescent pink light with the fish it it. You could see kind of the skeleton of there bodies and it was different than all the other tanks, because of the colored lights. I found it interesting how the fish didn't act different.

I liked going and watching the Journey to The Pacific. I thought that it was going to be boring but it wasn't. It was so cool. It was full of facts and information. I learned a lot in that video. Like that sea turtle can get up to 400 lbs or that the fish are going extinct because fishermen are over fishing them. I think that's sad because the reefs are so beautiful and they need fish to live in them. The movie showed a lot if different types of sea plants and of animals.It talked about how the mangroves protect the islands from storms and they protect the littler fish that live near shore. It showed us how sea turtles lay there eggs and how they can lay hundreds of eggs. And when they hatch they find there way to the ocean. On the way sometimes crabs and birds see the turtles and eat them, but some do make it to the ocean

Geological - Biologic Time Line

1. This activity helped us to learn about the past animals and geography of our earth. 
2. I think that i gained a lot of knowledge about many different thing. Such as the plants and animals, and the climate and much more. 
3. I worked with Tori to create a cambrian and learn about that time period. 
4. I learned a lot about the different types of animals and plants that existed. I learned how some do not still exist. All animals contributed to the earth in some way.
5. Tori and I worked very well with eachother. We got our work done but always learned a lot too.

Drastic decline in plankton

The articles that we read opened my eyes on how plankton really effects our ocean. Plankton are small organisms that help  many living things in the oceans. Plankton are one of the main souses of the ocean. Without them the food chain will start to die out. Each organism in the ocean depends on plankton one way or another. The majority of animals eat the plankton or eat the other animals that eat the plankton, so without plankton animals will die out. The articles state that the number of plankton is dropping. The ocean temperatures have started to rise, causing these organisms to die out. We wouldn't think that such a small thing in the ocean could effect the whole food chain but that's exactly what is happening. Plankton gobble up carbon dioxide that produce half the worlds oxygen, that will effect the whole world. The plankton population has dropped 40% since since 1950. That means that it has dropped about 1% of the average plankton population between 1899 and 2008, says the Scientific America article. Science has found that  plankton declines are near the poles and in the tropics, but also just anywhere in the ocean. Scientist believe that the rising temperatures are causing the drastic decline of plankton. In Scientific America, it says that as the surface water begins to warm, it forms a layer that does not mix with the cooler waters below, those are the waters with nutrients in it, such as the materials needed for CO2 and sunlight.

I think that its clearly a big problem that the plankton population is decreasing. Without the plankton the oceans fish population will start  to die out too. This will happen because all the organisms in the ocean in some way need plankton to live. Even if they are not directly eating the plankton they still eat other organisms that eat plankton. Plankton is an important part of our ocean. I think something has to be done in order to help keep the population up.

Food Web

1. Subtitle “Marine Food Web”.  Research the marine organism that you played in the food web activity: what eats it and who it eats. Fit the organism into a balanced marine ecosystem. What are the trophic relationships in your design? What would happen to the food web if one species were to become endangered or extinct? Which species would be affected? Which ecosystem would be affected?
1. Write the answers to the above questions as one paragraph.
2. Describe the class activity and record your 1/28 exit ticket.

1a. The food wed in an important part to all organisms. In the ocean every organism in the ocean is very important to one another. One animal eats another animal who eats another animal. Without cretin animals the food chain would slowly start to die. They all need each other for food.

1b. The class activity that we did was a fun activity.I enjoyed it, it really showed how much the food chain is connected and how every organism big and small are important in there own way. The activity showed us that with out some animals other animals would not be able to eat, therefor they would not be able to survive.

1. Subtitle “Phytoplankton”. The second activity you did was to learn about the neuston ecosystem and look at diatoms under the microscope.
   1. Explain why phytoplankton is so important to marine food webs. Identify the organisms that are in the neuston ecosystem, and how much of Earth’s surface this ecosystem covers.
   2. Write up your diatom lab results in a single paragraph. This includes

i.Hypotheses from page 3.

ii.Activity 1 results on page 5.

iii.Conclude and communicate on page 5.

1a. Plankton is important becuase they provide food for almost all the organisms that are living in the ocean. Plankton also take up about 71% of the oceans there are so many of them.

1b. Diatoms are very small organisms, they can only be seen under a microscope

1. Subtitle “Energy Flow”. Describe what happens to the amount of energy/biomass that is transferred from one trophic level to the next.

About 10% of net energy  is produced through the trophic levels. It reduces the energy transferred between the different trophic levels such  as  respiration, growth and reproduction. Death of organism also affect the impact on the energy flow. When animals die off other animals get impacted by them because they need each other to live.

        2.Subtitle “Human Impacts”. Answer and discuss the following:  What roles do humans play in marine food webs? How can human actions upset the balance of an ocean ecosystem?

Human impact effects the ocean in many ways. When we fish of dump things into the ocean it is killing the organisms in it, not all  but some. When we do things to destroy the ocean on purpose or not not matter what it will effect the ocean. When we impact the ocean we are impacting everything that's in it, the organisms that are in it suffer when we do things to put them in harms way.