Chapter 14 Ocean Water and Ocean Life
Answers to Review Questions
1. The sample from the tropical atlantic will have less
salinity than the one from the tropic of cancer.
The Baltic has low salinity and the red sea has high
salinity.
2.
250 meters
3. purple is temperature.
4. Isopycnal means constant density. Temperature affect
the density more than salinity content. In the artic the
water is cold at the surface and cold at depth, making the
density constant with depth. To create a pycnocline, the
surface would need to be warmed.
5. The hot surface at the equator creates a thermocline
which prevents mixing of nutrients from below. Without the
nutrients the biological productivity of the troical oceans
is low.
6.
Red line is the phytoplankton.
7. The cloudy water would decrease the amount of sunlight,
but would increase the available nutrients, so depending on
the amount it could decrease or increase the plankton,
nekton and bethos.
8. Phytoplankton to Zooplankton is 10%, ZooPlankton to
level 3 is 10% and level 3, so takes 100 times more
phytoplankton to add mass to the whale. So it is 100 grams
of phytoplankton to add 1 gram of mass to a killer whale.
However it seems to me that a killer whale is a 4th level
carnivore, not a 3rd level, so it would be 1,000 grams as it
takes another 10% to go from 3rd level to 4th level.
9. The next level below the top carnivore would dramatially
increase in population which may cause pollution and a
massive kill. Removal of the primry producer will cause a
dramatic decrease in the population of the top carnivore.