Origins of Earth & the Oceans
This early stage of a forming solar system contains gas and dust that collapses, spins, and flattens into a disk around a young star.
protoplanetary disk
These underwater features form when superheated, mineral-rich water hits cold seawater, forming dark plumes.
Black smokers
The time between two passing wave crests.
Wave period
These cnidarians build CaCO₃ structures in warm, shallow seas
Corals
Drifting photosynthetic organisms that form the base of the ocean food web
Phytoplankton
Water on Earth was once thought to come mostly from these icy bodies, but isotopic evidence shows their water does not match Earth’s.
Comets.
This iconic WHOI submersible enabled the first exploration of vent ecosystems in 1977
Alvin
A wave becomes a shallow-water wave when depth is less than this fraction of wavelength.
1/20 of the wavelength
Stress response where corals lose their symbiotic zooxanthellae.
Coral Bleaching
Pigment-rich algal bloom (often Karenia brevis) that causes neurotoxic shellfish poisoning.
Red tide.
This hypothesis suggests Earth’s water formed locally as hydrogen-rich atmospheres reacted with early molten rock
The hydrogen–rock reaction / homegrown water hypothesis.
Tube worms depend on bacteria that use chemical energy from H₂S instead of sunlight
Chemosynthesis
This 2004 event showed the destructive power of earthquake-triggered tsunamis.
Sumatra–Andaman earthquake
This Massachusetts sanctuary is known for sand lance and humpback whales
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary
Silica-shelled phytoplankton dominating spring blooms and forming siliceous ooze.
Diatoms.
Inside this boundary lies Earth’s liquid outer core, responsible for generating the planet’s magnetic field.
The core–mantle boundary (CMB)
Sections of oceanic crust thrust onto land that show hydrothermal alteration and contain metals
Ophiolites
During the last glacial maximum, sea level was lower by about this many meters
~120 meters
These coastal forests found in tropical regions grow in salty, tidally flooded environments and protect shorelines by trapping sediment and reducing erosion
Mangrove forests
Export of carbon to depth via sinking organic matter (“marine snow”).
The biological pump.
These small drifting solids in protoplanetary disks may transport water inward to rocky planets.
icy pebbles
These two reasons explain why 19th-century scientists believed the deep ocean was lifeless
Assumed pressure made life impossible and lacked sampling technology.
The term for the average height of the highest one-third of waves
Significant wave height (SWH)
Wetlands in temperate climates that trap sediment and build vertically with tides.
Salt Mashes.
CO₂-driven process in cold water that draws carbon into the deep ocean.
The solubility pump.