1st EPAL of DRAMA, GREECE

PART I

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Did you know that the sea covers greater than 70% of the earths surface?

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Did you know that sea contains the 99% of the living space on earth ?

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Did you know that without the living space the sea offers to organisms to survive , there would be five fewer phyla of animals on the earth ?

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So, lets see, why is sea so important?

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1. BIODIVERSITY

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Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within

a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet.

Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems.

Greater biodiversity implies greater health. Biodiversity is

in part a function of climate.

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Nearly three quarters of the Earth surface are covered by

sea. It appeared more than four billion years ago and for about three billion years life existed only there. The living organisms inhabit the sea far and wide: from the brightly illuminated surface down to the deepest and immersed in the constant darkness hollows. Depending on temperature, salinity and depths of the water, different parts of the sea are inhabited by a variety of creatures.

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2. Natural Resources

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The sea floor habitat is very important to all the organisms that live on the bottom (benthic organisms), as well as commercially important.

The continental shelves and ocean floor are home to many important minerals including oil and natural

gas.

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3. Transportation

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3. Transportation
Not only are seas important to sustain life, but also for moving materials that we use. Without commercial ship, transportation of goods from place to place would be much more difficult and expensive. Cities which have good natural harbors have always had an advantage, and even today are some of the largest cities in the world.

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4. Climate and weather

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4. Climate and weather

The seas interact with and affect global weather and climate. As the air passes over warm waters, it rises due to warming. As it cools, condensation of the water creates rainfall.
If the air passes over cooler waters, it cools and sinks. Air moves from high to low pressure areas.

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5. Economy

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The sea is also vital to our economy. More than 66% of the worlds population lives within 100 kilometers of the coastline. Sea can help economy through: Real estate Recreation Sea-related occupations and Other services and food associated with the sea

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Real estate

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Recreation
Hook and line fishing
Spear fishing Scuba diving

Snorkeling
Fish watching etc.

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Food
Fish
Sea food Kelp

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PART II
The Marine Biosphere

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The sea biosphere From Microbes to mammals

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Planet Earth is truly a water planet !

We have a connection to all living things in the sea, from the microscopic floating plants that supply us with the oxygen we breathe, to the huge blue whale that fills its belly with a ton of krill.

This circle of life is called a Biosphere

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The study of interactions between organisms and their

environment is called ecology. Living things such as plants and animals in the environment are called biotic factors. Nonliving things in the environment such as soil, water, temperature, light, salinity, chemical composition and currents are called abiotic factors. Together these factors interact and function as an ecosystem.

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An ecosystem is a community of different organisms

interacting with the abiotic parts of its environment. Ecosystems may be as small as a beehive or as large as the Atlantic Ocean.
With the aid of technology we are discovering entire

new ecosystems that survive in our biosphere.

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Viruses
The smallest organisms in the ocean

belong to viruses. They may cause diseases in different organisms and infect bacteria and phytoplankton

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Bacteria
They are found everywhere in the marine environment. They are larger than the viruses.
Researchers now believe that they too utilize available nutrients found in, and are important for recycling nutrients for other organisms.

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Plankton
Plankton include all of the organisms that drift passively in the ocean.

They are divisible into phytoplankton, the plant plankton, and zooplankton, the animal plankton.

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Phytoplankton
Phytoplankton are the primary producers, or autotrophs, of the open ocean. They take inorganic nutrients, CO2 and energy from sunlight and convert it into a carbohydrate source that is utilizable by other organisms. They are the start of the food web, providing carbon to all other ocean organisms.

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Zooplankton
Zooplankton, gain their nutrients by grazing on the phytoplankton.
Life cycles of the zooplankton are usually closely related with seasonal blooms of phytoplankton.

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Other heterotrophs
These include the fishes, octopods, squids, marine mammals and reptiles.

crabs

Sea turtles

mollusks Sea stars

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Fishes-Reptiles
There are almost 25,000 species of fishes, more than any other group of vertebrates. They have an amazing array of adaptations and live in a wide variety of habitats. Fish that live in the open ocean are called pelagic fishes.
There are not as many marine reptiles as there are terrestrial reptiles. The sea turtles are probably the mostfamiliar of this group.

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fish Sea mammals

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The benthos
There are numerous marine organisms that spend a large part of their lives

associated with the ocean floor. such as roundworms, flatworms, annelids,

ribbonworms, and bivalve mollusks. Many mollusks such as snails and slugs move slowly across the benthos

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The Marine Food Web

All organisms get their energy either from making their own food, or by eating something. Marine organisms gain energy from the passing of nutrients from one animal or plant to another. Nutrients pass from the simplest to the most complex organisms.

In the marine ecosystem,the food web begins with the autotrophs. The autotrophs are
the microscopic phytoplankton, primary producers, and bacteria. Phytoplankton make their own food through photosynthesis and feed others. CO2 and energy from sunlight

and convert it into a carbohydrate source that is utilizable by otherorganisms. This is

called photosynthesis. They are the start of the food web, providing carbon to all other ocean organisms.

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After the autotrophic level, nutrients pass from a simple to a more complex level in the food web. Heterotrophs eat autotrophs, thus gaining energy from the food source. Heterotrophs include :
zooplankton, younger fish, plankton feeding fishes, and many other sea animals feed on the plankton.

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The Marine Food Web

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DID YOU KNOW?

The blue whale, Balaenoptre Musculus, is the largest known animal ever to have lived on sea or land. Individuals can reach more than 110 feet and weigh nearly 200 tons each (more than the weight of 50 adult elephants). The blue whales blood vessels are so broad that a full-grown trout could swim through them, and the vessels serve a heart the size of a small car. One study of deep-sea community revealed 898 species from more than 100 families and a dozen phyla in an area about the size of a tennis court. More than half was new to science. The siphonophore Physalia physalis, or Portuguese man-ofwar can grow to 0.5 meters in diameter and have tentacles 30 meters long. Even more amazing, this is not an organism, but a colony of organisms. The float which may be 20 cm in length, is one individual, other members may entrap, paralyze or engulf prey. Each individual has a job to do as a member of the colony! Elephant seals, family Phocidae can grow up to 21 feet in length and regularly dive to 2,500 meters feet. One male fitted with a radio pack was recorded diving to 5,150 feet! The cannonball jellyfish has a symbiotic crab that lives under its bell, away from the stinging tentacles.

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PART III
The Water Planet at Risk

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Despite its vast size, we now realize that sea resources are finite and marine life is susceptible to human influences.

The sea covers 70% of Earth and have a volume of 300 million cubic
miles, weighing approximately 1.3 million million million tons. But, with the human population of the earth increasing every day, one small plastic cup from each person adds up to a lot of garbage. Everything that happens in our ocean makes a difference.

There are many processes that affect our ocean, and they all act
together.

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Nutrients
Nutrient pollution is caused by excessive amounts of chemicals such as nitrates and
phosphates entering the oceans via runoff from fertilized land, sewage and the burning of fossil fuels. Nutrient pollution is a major contributor to the global epidemic of algae blooms. Algae blooms are a natural occurrence, but in recent years these algae blooms have increased in frequency and duration. Anoxia occurs when huge amount of organic material produced by algal blooms, or

when raw sewage leaks into coastal waters, depletes the waters of oxygen needed by
other marine organisms. This is the major cause of fish kills due to anoxia.

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Debris
Manmade debris in the marine environment comes from many sources and includes such discarded items as:

fishing nets,
gloves, plastic sheeting, fishing lines,

buckets, hardhats,
buoys, small, round resin pellets, bottles,

Styrofoam cups, and much more

The greatest threats to the marine environment appear to be entanglement or entrapment in plastic objects. Recent studies show that 30,000 marine mammals die annually due to entanglement. Fish, birds, sea turtles and marine mammals mistake plastic debris for food and starve to death. Marine debris endangers the safety and livelihood of fishermen and recreational boaters as well as animals.

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Sediment
Marine habitats such as seagrass beds, wetlands, and coral reefs are being destroyed by sediment from soil erosion. Deforestation, or the clearing of land for construction or agriculture, increases sediment loads, increasing water turbidity. Excessive dredging in coastal waterways also increases turbidity. Many plants and animals require clear water, including sea grasses and corals. These organisms need light for growth. Animals such as clams also are harmed by high turbidity, because the filters they use to capture their plankton food are clogged by sediment. Coastal development can destroy wetlands directly by draining, dredging, and filling wetlands.

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Toxic chemicals
Most of the oil that ends up in the ocean is not due to oil spills but instead comes from terrestrial runoff. Only 5% of marine oil pollution comes from large tanker spills! Home oil changes and industrial waste water are major sources. Routine shipping operations, such as cleaning bilges, releases many million of gallons of oil into the ocean each year. Both industry and cars release hundreds of tons of hydrocarbons into the air. These airborne particles then settle into the ocean or are carried in by rain and runoff. Metals and toxic chemicals which enter the ocean sink to the sea floor, where they are become part of the food web of benthic organisms, those animals which live and feed on the ocean bottom. Some heavy metals, such as mercury, and pesticides like PCB's (polychlorinated biphenyls) are known to bioaccumulate. These compounds are not easily broken down by animals, but rather, are passed on to animals higher in the food web. As the concentrations of these compounds increase in higher organisms, their dangerous effects are magnified, eventually causing disease or death. Heavy metals such as mercury and lead as well as organochlorine compounds such as PCB's and DDT have been linked to mortality and malformation in fish as well as humans.

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Pathogens
Sewage treatment plants are designed to kill bacteria and viruses,
especially the pathogens, which can cause human diseases. When raw sewage leaks into the coastal waters from faulty treatment plants, leaking or open septic systems, or overboard discharge from boats, it can contaminate waters and shellfish with

diseases, such as Hepatitis A, cholera and many others.

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Misuse: overfishing, recreational destruction, freshwater reduction

Humans also cause direct damage to marine systems by their actions. Overfishing removes all the big fish from an area, upsetting the balance between species.

Another problem is bycatch, which is any marine life that is caught during fishing operations for a different targeted species. It is estimated that about 20 million tons of marine fish and other animals are killed and discarded annually. Bycatch contributes significantly to the overfishing problem because much of the bycatch is juvenile fish.

Dams drastically change coastal and riverine environments. They block the migration routes for feeding and spawning of fish. They also reduce natural freshwater runoff, hence higher salinity waters occur at the mouths of rivers, destroying the estuaries. This has devastating consequences for estuarine plants and animals.

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Climate change
Temperature changes in coastal and marine ecosystems will influence organism metabolism and alter ecological processes such as productivity and species interactions. Species are adapted to specific ranges of environmental temperature. As temperatures change, species geographic distributions will expand or contract, creating new combinations of species that will interact in unpredictable ways. Species that are unable to migrate or compete with other species for resources may face local or global extinction

Climate change is likely to alter patterns of wind and water circulation in the ocean environment. Such changes may influence the vertical movement of ocean waters (i.e., upwelling and downwelling), increasing or decreasing the availability of essential nutrients and oxygen to marine organisms. Changes in ocean circulation patterns can also cause substantial changes in regional ocean and land temperatures and the geographic distributions of marine species.

Critical coastal ecosystems such as wetlands, estuaries, and coral reefs are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Such
ecosystems are among the most biologically productive environments in the world. Their existence at the interface between the terrestrial and marine environment exposes them to a wide variety of human and natural stressors. The added burden of climate change may further degrade these valuable ecosystems, threatening their ecological sustainability and the flow of goods and services they provide to human populations.

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What can be done to help ?

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limit human-caused damage to marine ecosystems Preserve vulnerable marine species. Phase out the use of toxic, persistent and

bioaccumulating substances Protect marine wildlife Keep seas and beaches clean Proper management of fisheries Reduce our energy footprint

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Top 9 Things You Can Do To Help Our Sea

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Marine Conservation Organizations

http://www.conservation.org/

http://www.savethehighseas.org/
http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/ http://www.greenpeace.org/ http://www.oceanconservationscience.org/ http://saveourseas.wordpress.com/ http://www.conbio.org/ http://wwf.panda.org/