![]() We know the major problems and largely how they came about. These are large and complex problems understanding and alleviating them is essential.īut the promise is also great. Human civilization is putting increasing pressure on ocean life, from overfishing, nutrient pollution, waste dumping, and climate change due to greenhouse effects. The sea and its biology is crucial for us and our planet-for balancing oxygen and carbon dioxide, for maintaining genetic diversity, and for producing food. Revolutionary biotechnology concepts and methods, applied to life in the sea, helped us discover new organisms, untangle evolutionary relationships, explain adaptations, and reveal fundamental mechanisms of life.Įntering the 21st century, ocean biology faces tremendous challenges-not only to understand the complex ecosystems of the sea, but to learn how to maintain the integrity, productivity, and resources of the ocean for the future. Even surface waters yielded new discoveries of ubiquitous microbes, including photosynthetic bacteria responsible for half the primary production in the ocean. Submersibles, manned and robotic, explored parts of the deep ocean never before visited, retrieving images and specimens of creatures new to human knowledge. Satellite pictures of light reflected from chlorophyll in the ocean revealed broad patterns of phytoplankton abundance, and satellite maps of ocean temperatures helped us understand the distribution of pelagic animals. In the 20th century, new technology enhanced traditional collecting methods to locate organisms and characterize their habitats. They range from immense to minute and live everywhere, from geysers on the seafloor to the lips of lobsters. The ocean is home to the greatest part of Earth’s biodiversity, containing 90 percent of the major groups of living things. In three billion years of Earth history, its waters have nurtured nearly every form of life that has ever existed, including probably the first entities that were truly alive. The sea is the great experimental laboratory of evolution. ![]() Without its oceans, Earth would be a rock in space, and life may never have appeared on our planet. The oceans cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface and constitute 99 percent of its living space, and every drop of ocean water holds living things. ![]()
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