1. Marine Ecosystems

6. Ecology and Ecosystems
Marine ecology studies the relationships and interactions of the abiotic and biotic aspects of the environment
Abiotic factors are the non-living parts and will include rocks, sand, water, temperature,salinity, light, wind, etc
Biotic factors are the living parts and will include plants, animals, fish, bacteria, etc
4 Branches of marine ecology include:
Biological oceanography
Chemical oceanography
Geological oceanography
Physical oceanography

7. Ecology Terminology
1. Ecosystem- a community of organisms and their abiotic environment.
2. Community- a collection of different organisms living and interacting in an ecosystem
3. Population- a group of the same species living and interacting within a community
4. Habitat- includes the area and conditions in which you find an organism
5. Microhabitat- same as a habitat but on a very small scale. Example: tiny organisms living between the grains of sand
6. Niche- an organisms role in its habitat

8. Energy Flow
Photosynthesizers and chemosynthesizers bring energy from the sun and chemicals into the food web
This energy transfers up through the food web but only 10% of it is available to pass on to the next trophic level
This limits the number of organisms at each trophic level
Numbers of organisms drastically decline as you go from primary producers to high level predators
There are far more primary producers such as plankton and grasses and very few top predators such as sharks
High primary production creates the potential for more organisms at high trophic levels

9. Energy Flow
If pollution causes a substantial decline in an ecosystem’s primary consumers it will disrupt energy flow to all the other trophic levels
It will cause a decline in population numbers at each trophic level
We see this happening with a decline in commercial fishing production
In past years New Jersey saw a decline in many species of organisms due to pollution