General Marine Science
This term refers to the average measurement of all the salts dissolved in water.
What is Salinity?
This tiny crustacean is the primary food source for many baleen whales.
What is Krill?
This property allows water to resist changes in temperature, helping regulate the Earth's climate.
What is Specific Heat Capacity?
This type of phytoplankton uses two whip-like tails to move and can cause "Red Tides."
What are Dinoflagellates?
This type of "unbreakable" plastic pollution is defined as pieces smaller than 5 millimeters in length.
What are Microplastics?
These are the two primary ions that make up over 85% of the ocean's dissolved salts.
What are Sodium and Chloride?
Most cephalopods have three of these organs to pump blood through their bodies.
What are Hearts?
For every 10 meters of depth in the ocean, the pressure increases by this many atmospheres.
What is One?
These phytoplankton have glass-like cell walls made of silica.
What are Diatoms?
This massive structure is the only living thing on Earth visible from space.
What is the Great Barrier Reef?
This "conveyor belt" of ocean currents is driven by differences in temperature and salinity.
What is Thermohaline Circulation?
This is the term for an animal that can produce its own light through chemical reactions.
What is Bioluminescent?
This is the layer of the ocean where temperature decreases rapidly with increasing depth.
What is the Thermocline?
This is the pigment used by phytoplankton to capture sunlight for photosynthesis.
What is Chlorophyll?
This is the name for a circular coral reef that surrounds a central lagoon.
What is an Atoll?
This phenomenon occurs when deep, cold, nutrient-rich water rises to the surface.
What is Upwelling?
These "living fossils" have blue blood and are more closely related to spiders than crabs.
What are Horseshoe Crabs?
This is the name for the layer of the ocean where water density increases rapidly with depth.
What is the Pycnocline?
This term describes a sudden, rapid increase in the population of phytoplankton.
What is a Bloom?
This is the deepest known point in the Earth's oceans, located in the Mariana Trench.
What is Challenger Deep?
This is the specific chemical process by which increasing CO2 levels lower the pH of seawater.
What is Ocean Acidification?
This is the only species of shark known to be capable of living in both salt and fresh water.
What is the Bull Shark?
This effect, caused by the Earth's rotation, deflects moving water to the right in the Northern Hemisphere.
What is the Coriolis Effect?
These phytoplankton build shells out of calcium carbonate, often turning the water a milky turquoise.
What are Coccolithophores?
This is the term for the movement of carbon from the surface ocean to the deep sea via biological processes.
What is the Biological Pump?