Today was another great day in marine biology. Today we went over the biological zonation of the ocean, and we went over various classes of plankton. Wegoing over biological zonation, I learned that the ocean ground, the Benthic zone, is in a whole zone of its own. That means that the ocean floor, the gound of the tidelines, and evereything in between is classified as one zone. I was very intrigued when I learned this because I had never heard this before. Today we also looked at the many diffeerent types of plankton. I was very very suprised to hear that plankton only means any organims that drifts with the current. To be honest, I did not even think twice that octopus and jellyfish larvae are considered plankton. I origianlly thought that plankton were specifically a type of organism that was minisculy small and had what looked like antennas and throns sticking out of it. Well, back to the subject of plankton. We also learned that phytoplankton uses the power of the sun/light to use photosynthesis and when there is a large amount of these kinds of plankton in an area that has a lot of light, they begin to turn red and “bloom”. If anyone has been to the beach and seen a reddish brown looking tide, you know what I mean. Ohh, also another cool thing about phytoplankton is that they are eaten by zooplankton. Talk about cannabalism. Well that’s all for today. Tune in monday for another post. Here is a pic.
