Marine Life for Dummies

Some of the factors affecting marine organisms

Every once in a while one of our staffers runs across a post on a supposedly "educational" website that, in reality, reads more like propaganda than information. Sometimes it reads that way because the author clearly has an agenda (like this article), but sometimes it's fairly clear that a freelancer who pounded out that particular content lacked enough basic education about the topic to recognize the problem. We think Andrea Sigust, eHowian writing at Sciencing.com, falls into the second category with her article, "Factors Affecting Marine Life."

We came to that conclusion because Sigust treated the question more as "What is man doing to the planet's marine life?" than as "What are the basic factors affecting marine life?" Our conclusion is based in part on Andrea's introduction:

"...Marine life encompasses a broad range of plants and animals living in various ocean ecological systems throughout the world. Numerous things can affect marine life, including pollution, temperature, ocean currents and the sea’s chemical balance."

We were more confused, however by her list of "factors":

• Pollution: "Experts contend that water contamination or pollution is the greatest factor that affects marine life. "
• Rising Temperatures: "Changes in ocean temperature can be attributed to numerous factors, including general climate conditions, the earth’s tectonic plate and core activity, and global warming."
• Ocean Currents: "Currents have a great impact on marine life by transporting microscopic and large organisms."
• Chemical Balance: "Variations in the sea’s chemical composition are common due to factors including pollution, atmospheric conditions and physiological changes of marine life (such as decay, biological emissions, etc.). "

Only in "Chemical Balance" and, tangentially, in "Ocean Currents" does Sigust touch on the basic list of factors that control the health of a marine environment. Briefly, those factors are (in no particular order) 1) turbidity, 2) light penetration, 3) water temperature, 4) salinity, 5) pH, 6) level of oxygen, and 7) water movement.

Those are the basic factors that affect the health of a marine organism and define the habitats in which different organisms may thrive. Changes in those factors come about naturally in the evolution of the marine biome, not just as the result of pollution or global climate change. Throwing in three-dollar words like "stenohaline" (or perhaps "euryhaline") does not make the material more relevant. Most, if not all, of what Andrea discussed in her article are variables that can change one or more of the factors controlling habitat. Instead of providing a basic introduction to marine biology, Sigust decided that the OQ wanted to know about anthropomorphic changes to the marine environment. That's not, however, what the OQ asked. For her decision to skip over the basics in favor of a trendy article weakly researched, we hereby name Sigust our Dumbass of the Day.

copyright © 2018-2021 scmrak

SI - BIOLOGY