Portal:Marine life

A male whale shark at the Georgia Aquarium.
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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 that inhabit 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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Morphological diversity of fungi collected from a marine sponge species, Ircinia variabilis

Marine fungi are species of fungi that live in marine or estuarine environments. They are not a taxonomic group, but share a common habitat. Obligate marine fungi grow exclusively in the marine habitat while wholly or sporadically submerged in sea water. Facultative marine fungi normally occupy terrestrial or freshwater habitats, but are capable of living or even sporulating in a marine habitat. About 444 species of marine fungi have been described, including seven genera and ten species of basidiomycetes, and 177 genera and 360 species of ascomycetes. The remainder of the marine fungi are chytrids and mitosporic or asexual fungi. Many species of marine fungi are known only from spores and it is likely a large number of species have yet to be discovered. In fact, it is thought that less than 1% of all marine fungal species have been described, due to difficulty in targeting marine fungal DNA and difficulties that arise in attempting to grow cultures of marine fungi. It is impracticable to culture many of these fungi, but their nature can be investigated by examining seawater samples and undertaking rDNA analysis of the fungal material found.

Different marine habitats support very different fungal communities. Fungi can be found in niches ranging from ocean depths and coastal waters to mangrove swamps and estuaries with low salinity levels. Marine fungi can be saprobic or parasitic on animals, saprobic or parasitic on algae, saprobic on plants or saprobic on dead wood. (Full article...)
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The following are images from various marine life-related articles on Wikipedia.

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  • ... the open mouth of an adult southern right whale can be two metres wide!
  • ... Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick had real-life inspiration, a notorious male sperm whale named Mocha Dick.
  • ... The sea otter often keeps a stone tool in its armpit pouch.
  • ... both whales and dolphins carry ‘whale lice’ — small crustaceans that inhabit folds in the skin of whales and dolphins, feeding off the loose skin.
  • ... baleen from the Mysticeti whales mouths was used to stiffen parts of women's stays and dresses, like corsets
  • ... In 2004, while snorkelling in Australia, Luke Tresoglavic was bitten by a small wobbegong that refused to let go. He had to swim to the shore and drive to get help with the shark still attached to his leg.

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Photo credit: Jens Petersen

Schooling bigeye trevally. In biology, any group of fish that stay together for social reasons are said to be shoaling and if the group is swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner, they are said to be schooling.

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See also

For additional lists of marine life-related featured articles and good articles see:

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

WikiProjects

WikiProjects The Wikiproject associated with this portal is the Marine Life WikiProject

Other WikiProjects include:

  • Biology
  • Oceans
  • Tree of Life
    • Birds
    • Mammals
      • Cetaceans
    • Fishes
      • Sharks
      • Fisheries and fishing
    • Amphibians and Reptiles
    • Plants
    • Cephalopods
    • Gastropods
    • Monotremes and Marsupials

Tasks

Have a look at the Marine life WikiProject and sign up.


Here are some tasks you can do, as organized by The Marine life Wikiproject:

  • Collaboration of the week: Marine life article assessment
  • Other: See the projects page
  • Images: Upload any non-copyrighted marine life images to Wikimedia Commons
  • Featured Articles/Good Articles:
  • Other: Add {{Portal|Marine life}} to related articles
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This page was last updated at 2024-08-10 07:19 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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