Oceans and Sea Life

The deep sea is the largest habitat on the planet.  The deep ocean realm is a vast dark frontier that includes about 97% of the water on the planet.  Oceans cover over 70% of the earth’s surface, yet fewer than 5% of the planet’s oceans have been explored because deep sea conditions (e.g. total darkness, cold temperatures, extreme pressures) are too dramatically harsh.  Our oceans are very deep (the average depth of the oceans is 2.4 miles), and yet our knowledge of the dark cold depths of the deep sea is quite limited.  90 to 95% of the ocean depth is a mystery.  Today the great unknown ocean depths are being probed using sophisticated technology and newly designed robots capable of going down to dangerous, remote, previously unexplored areas of the ocean bottom.

The unseen world around us contains the wonderful microgems known as diatoms.  Diatoms are very unique single-celled life forms of the algae family. You’ll be glad you heard about them if you aren’t already familiar with their unusual abilities. Diatoms are very intriguing tiny things that physically mold for themselves quite unusual, custom-built little glass houses called frustules.  These exquisite diatom shells look like tiny well-planned masterpiece works of manufactured tech art.  Hopefully you can view samples of some of these wonderfully different artistic sculpted diatom glass houses in books, journals and videos (or up-close personally through a powerful microscope if you are so fortunate!).  They are incredible looking things – impressively sophisticated, elegant technological design objects! Diatoms are master builders who self-manufacture their mystifying, hard-shelled, porous, silica-based cell walls to exacting geometries to suit themselves. They transform a liquid form of silica to a form they can use for their cell wall synthesis – a process called biomineralization.  They build their ornate jewel-shell glass houses to self-specification, so they vary in shape and size. It’s still not fully known just how the diatoms build their remarkable elaborate silica structures.  The craftsmanship of these beautiful  forms masterfully created by skilled diatoms are just the most stunningly beautiful and amazingly intricately shaped architectural structures.  They can be ovoid.  They can look curved or twisted.  They can be zigzags.  They can be shaped like stars or fans or ribbons.  These tiny amazing wonders that diatoms build around themselves can come in many different shapes – symmetrical, asymmetrical, circular, 4-sided, triangular, rectangular, boat-shaped, tube-shaped, crown-shaped, multi-sided, and other various wondrously precise configurations. They are very intricate inventions.  Diatoms are nick-named “jewels of the sea,” and for good reason.  Diatom frustules feature photonic nanostructures that have the property of structural coloration (an example of color produced by microscopically structured surfaces’ interaction with light).  Among other functions, a diatom frustule provides outstanding armor-like mechanical protection against predators.  The frustule is a robust structure that is remarkably strong and can withstand much force in its environment for its size.  Typically these frustules form in 2 pieces having a base and a lid that fit together like a pillbox.  Many diatoms can move on a surface.  They have an exquisite molecular internal motor and they make a sticky substance.  There are an enormous number of diatoms in the world.  When diatoms die their discarded frustule structure skeletons fall down through the water and can reach a half mile deep on the ocean floor.  Diatoms play a great part in the oceanic ecosystem. They provide food and energy for other marine life.  They also generate 20 to 50% of the oxygen on the planet, so it’s estimated they’re responsible for 1 out of every 2 breaths we take. Globally it’s estimated there are around tens of thousands to 2 million diatom species worldwide.  Each species has its own shape and most are microscopic.  Invisible to the naked eye, diatoms live in aquatic environments, both freshwater and saltwater, and can be found almost anywhere on earth – oceans, lakes, streams, ponds, mud puddles, wet rocks, some topsoil and even Antarctica. Diatoms are tiny – typically 10 to 20 microns across (about 4 times thinner than a human hair or 1/1,000’s of the diameter of a dime).  Cell division of diatoms is not fully understood.  It is now known that diatoms are half plant and half animal.  The internal anatomical components of the tiny unicellular diatom is quite complex and consists of several compartments and parts (e.g. valves, ports, canals, vents, patterns of teeny punctures and slits, spines, striae, ornamentation).  Discarded diatom silica cell wall shells that have sunk to the bottom of the ocean are called diatomite.  Diatomite is commercially mined and ground  to a powder to be used for multiple applications.  Among its many uses, diatomite is used in the making of dynamite!  It is used for insecticide, as an abrasive, a filler, as absorbent material in kitty litter, for cleaning swimming pools and for many other useful and industrial purposes.     

Octopuses have some exceptional characteristics.  They literally have blue blood.  With a bulbous head and 8 semi-autonomous arms, they do look strange.  They are considered one of the most intelligent creatures on earth.  They are very clever creatures.  They’re able to escape from surprisingly small enclosed spaces.  They are known to use tools.  Their suckers are sensory organs.  They squirt blue ink.  They can expertly camouflage themselves.  They can walk.  They can grow back a severed arm.  They can change skin texture and they possess advanced color change mechanisms that allow them to change color as often as they like (which is very often) to blend in.  Some have chromatophores (special pigment-filled colored cells) and leucophores (white-reflecting cells) that have a mechanical-style shutter that hides or displays them so they can appear white like a polar bear.  They have 3 hearts, but 1 of their 3 hearts has to stop beating when they swim (a tiring activity), so the octopus will stroll to save its energy.

Whales emit ultrasound.  They communicate with complex intricate songs, whistling sounds, chirps and clicks.  Pods of whales may have their own dialect.  Their singing can travel over thousands of ocean miles.  Dolphins have sophisticated, advanced communication methods including body gesture signals, pulses, clicks and whistles.  They emit ultrasounds that can also carry over a long distance.

The oceans produce oxygen and regulate rain.  Our greatest source of oxygen on the earth comes from the ocean.  The oceans are responsible for 70% of the oxygen in our atmosphere.  7 out of 10 breaths we take are from the ocean.  Almost all water that falls on land is from the sea.  Our oceans are vast, deep and mysterious.  The average depth of the ocean is greater than 2.5 miles.  About 95% of all life lives in the ocean.  95% of the worlds oceans have not been explored.  99% of the ocean floor has not been explored.  As of 2020, over 80% of ocean space has not been mapped or even seen by humans.

Oceans take up over 70% of earth’s surface, but they’re home to only 1% of earth’s biomass.  78% of animal biomass lives in a marine environment.  Here are some interesting facts about fish:  There are over 30,000 species of fish.  Fish can navigate in total darkness because of a specialized sense organ they possess (referred to as their lateral line) that is like radar for them.  Ice fish living in the Antarctic have special natural antifreeze in their blood that allows them to live in sub-zero temperatures and not freeze to death.  Humans have 9,000 taste buds, but catfish have 27,000 taste buds.  The longest living fish is the orange roughy.  They can live up to 149 years old.

The dolphin’s sonar system is extremely precise.  A dolphin is able to detect a distant fish that’s only the size of a golf ball from 230 feet away.  The dolphin’s sonar system includes a highly complex sophisticated bioacoustic component called a melon.  The melon is a mass of adipose tissue in its forehead, but it is not fully understood.  Among other complicated functions, this fatty structure acts like a sound lens for the dolphin to direct a beam of sound where it chooses.  Various lipids bend specific sound waves in different ways, and the lipids must be arranged in a special shape and order sequence to be able to send back sound echoes.  Each separate required lipid is created by a highly complex chemical process that’s dependent on a number of various enzymes.

The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.  –Psalm 8: 8 (NIV).

U.S. naval officer Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873), nicknamed the “Pathfinder of the Seas,” is described as being the founder of the science of modern oceanography.  He believed the truth of the Bible about King David’s “paths of the seas,” and he set out to find this after reading Psalm 8: 8.  He found the courses of the seas by mapping the significant global wind and ocean currents.

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?  –Job 38: 16a (KJV).

 When he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, –Proverbs 8: 28 (NIV).

Marine scientists have discovered ocean springs.  Fountains or ocean springs were referred to in the Bible in Genesis 7: 11, Job 38: 16 and Proverbs 8: 28.  Job couldn’t have known about ocean springs because he’d never been to the bottom of the ocean.  In 1977 researchers found ocean springs (along with abundant and strange sea creatures such as giant worms and huge clams that lived around the hot springs) off the coast of Ecuador that went 1.5 miles deep. Many more ocean springs have been discovered at a number of other sites since then.