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Portal:Marine life

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A male whale shark at the Georgia Aquarium.

The Marine Life Portal

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

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

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


Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy. (Full article...)

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HMS Challenger during its pioneer expedition of 1872–76

Marine biology is a hybrid subject that combines aspects of organismal function, ecological interaction and the study of marine biodiversity. The earliest studies of marine biology trace back to the Phoenicians and the Greeks who are known as the initial explorers of the oceans and their composition. The first recorded observations on the distribution and habits of marine life were made by Aristotle (384–322 BC).

Observations made in the earliest studies of marine biology provided an impetus for the age of discovery and exploration that followed. During this time, a vast amount of knowledge was gained about life that exists in the oceans. Individuals who contributed significantly to this pool of knowledge include Captain James Cook (1728–1779), Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Wyville Thomson (1830–1882). (Full article...)
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  • ... Most sharks never close their eyes. Some have special see-through eyelids that protect their eyes without cutting out light. Others just roll their eyes up into their head to protect them.
  • ... If sharks don’t keep on swimming they sink to the seabed.
  • ... on average, a whale or dolphin will eat four to five percent of its body weight in food per day. That means that a 100 ton blue whale will eat almost five tons of krill per day, or that a 200kg bottlenose dolphin will eat 10kg of fish per day!
  • ... there are probably types of cetaceans that are as yet unknown. For example, the Longman's beaked whale is only known from skulls washed ashore in Somalia and Australia. It has never been seen alive!
  • ... In sand tiger sharks and several other species, the biggest, strongest pups eat the others while still inside their mother’s body.
  • ... Sharks have been around longer than trees!

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Photo credit: Nicolas Pourcelot

A limule (Horseshoe crab) in the Hạ Long Bay, Quảng Ninh province, Vietnam. Horseshoe crabs are arthropods that live primarily in shallow ocean waters on soft sandy or muddy bottoms.

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