What are the factors used to divide the ocean into distinct marine life zones?

What are the factors used to divide the ocean into distinct marine life zones?

 Three factors are used to divide the ocean into distinct marine life zones: the availability of sunlight, the distance from shore, and the water depth.

What are the factors that influences marine life?

Biotic factors include plants, animals, and microbes; important abiotic 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 the most important abiotic factors for marine ecosystems.

What are the 3 distinct factors that we use to determine oceanic zones?

Overview

• There are three main ocean zones based on distance from shore.
• They are the intertidal zone , neritic zone , and oceanic zone .
• Distance from shore and depth of water define ocean zones.
• In addition to the amount of salts, other conditions in ocean water vary from place to place.

What are the divisions of life on oceans?

Three main groups of ocean life are plankton, nekton, and benthos. Plankton float in the water.

What factors influence density in seawater?

The density of seawater depends on temperature and salinity. Higher temperatures decrease the density of seawater, while higher salinity increases the density of seawater.

Which factors determine productivity in temperate oceans?

Ocean Productivity. Abiotic factors like solar radiation and nutrients, and biotic factors like zooplankton predation may affect ocean primary productivity. Productivity varies with the season, and also locally and globally.

How does ocean current affect marine life?

By moving heat from the equator toward the poles, ocean currents play an important role in controlling the climate. Ocean currents are also critically important to sea life. They carry nutrients and food to organisms that live permanently attached in one place, and carry reproductive cells and ocean life to new places.

How does ocean pollution affect marine life?

Fish, seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals can become entangled in or ingest plastic debris, causing suffocation, starvation, and drowning. On many beaches, plastic pollution is so pervasive that it’s affecting turtles’ reproduction rates by altering the temperatures of the sand where incubation occurs.

What are the three zones that further divide the open ocean zone?

The three ocean zones, in order of depth, are the surface, middle realm and deep realm.

Why is the ocean divided into zones?

Oceanographers have divided the ocean into zones based on how far light reaches. All of the light zones can be found in the oceanic zone. The epipelagic zone is the one closest to the surface and is the best lit.

What three categories can marine life be divided based on their lifestyles?

Which factors affect the movement of ocean currents?

Oceanic currents are driven by three main factors:

• The rise and fall of the tides. Tides create a current in the oceans, which are strongest near the shore, and in bays and estuaries along the coast.
• Wind. Winds drive currents that are at or near the ocean’s surface.
• Thermohaline circulation.