Fact File 007 - Oceans Earths Last Great Mystery!

Today’s fact file will be focusing on something we know a lot about but as a whole there is still so much more left to lean and understand. It is constantly changing and is so varied across the area which it covers. If you couldn’t tell from the title today we’ll be learning about the worlds oceans.

• A fact that may people like to say is that the worlds surface is 71% covered by oceans. That’s a really large amount and what this fact doesn’t take into account is the depth and therefore the volume which can be inhabited. The fact that more is known about the surface of the moon than the sea bed amazes me. It is extremely hard to study the sea floor however as at some points it reaches depth greater than 11km down. But we do know that there is still life down there!

• The biodiversity of the sea is huge. There are currently 230,000+ recorded species in the world’s oceans and there are many thousands left yet to be described. These species stretch from the giant squid to the strangest creatures like Hydrothermal vent tubeworms such as Riftia pachyptila which survive around the volcanic vents on the ocean floor, there are so many different niches within the ocean and every single one of them is filled. You can use this link to explore every described species in the oceans, check it out!

http://www.marinespecies.org/

• Thanks to its huge biodiversity the oceans are also extremely productive, and it all starts with microscopic plankton called phytoplankton (and other marine plants). In fact oceans are by far the largest carbon sinks in the world and every year they take up 2.5 billion tons annually (2002-2011), sadly however this isn’t enough to compensate for the burning of fossil fuels. But it is the source of the oceans productivity and allows creates such as the millions of different fish to exist.

• Finally the ocean provides an environment which allows different animals to be present. I’m not just talking about the fact that it’s aquatic but more of the way the water allows certain boundries found in terrestrial species to be stretched. Water is great at supporting creates mass and therefore has allowed the evolution of the world’s largest ever creature, the Blue Whale. The size of a Blue whale is hard to describe but to put it in some context their tongues can weigh as much as a bull elephant. However without the support that dense water provides the whales they would be an impossibility, and within a terrestrial environment would be crushed by their own body weight. It’s always important to remember that this creature is sustained by krill, one of the smaller species in the sea (40 million krill or 8,000 pounds per day).

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from BIOstation

And this one from the BBC