Coral Reefs, seaweed, kelp and plankton. Just a handful of lifeforms that we find in waters where light can reach, where plankton can photosynthesise, and for a complex array of plants and animals to build upon that in a food chain. In this video, I explore the origins of Earth's seas, continental shelfs, and how life has developed within this biome.

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🕐TIMESTAMPS🕖
👉0:00 Opening Montage
👉0:27 Introduction and Titles
👉1:40 Formation of the Oceans
👉2:50 Shallow Seas vs Deep Oceans
👉3:20 Continental Shelf
👉4:40 Climate Change and Sea Level Change
👉5:35 Composition of Seawater
👉6:48 Light Penetration in Seawater
👉7:43 Plankton
👉9:33 Seaweed, Kelp and Animal Food Chains
👉10:20 Coral
👉11:58 Environmental Threats
👉13:49 Outro


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In the formation of the Earth, a small fraction of the original material was ice. This eventually formed the oceans and seas as we know them today. Where light can penetrate the sea bottom, around the coastlines and within the continental shelfs, life can flourish.

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Seawater is about 3.5% minerals, with most of this being in the form of sodium chloride, and hence the water is saline. Plants and animals must evolve to cope with this salt in their internal membranes and tissues.

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The presence of light means photosynthesis, and this is the reason that shallow seas are so rich, with various types of plankton, microscopic plants and bacteria, being able use light to convert water and CO2 into organic matter. Other plankton feed upon these, and krill, jellyfish, crustaceans, molluscs, fish, sharks and whales feed in a complex food chain upon the rest.

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Sea flora, beyond the microscopic, consists of seaweed and kelp which a multicellular forms of algae. But the most notable "fixed" living organisms within the shallow seas are corals, which are in fact animals that have a photosynthetic symbiote within their cells. Corals grow through cloning and sexual reproduction to form coral reefs, as they excrete calcium carbonate at their base.

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Threats to the shallow seas ecosystem include the bleaching of coral reefs, overfishing, and marine plastic pollution.
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FURTHER READING:

Additional charts, maps and images along with the narrative script - click here:
👉 https://geodiode.com/biomes/shallow-seas

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📷📹🎥 VIDEO & PHOTO CREDITS ❤️❤️❤️
http://geodiode.com/biomes/shallow-seas#credits

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Media Procurement Assistance: Richard Torres

Narrated, Written and Produced by
B.J.Ranson

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