Biology Biome Project:Coastal Zone
Also know as the inter-tital zone, the coastal zone connects the land to the ocean. It is also called the area that is exposed to the air at low tide and submerged at high tide. An example of this is the area between tide marks. The variety of marine animals have adapted to the many changes and brutal rough tides that come along. This area includudes many different kinds of habitats, like sandy beaches, steep rocky cliffs, and wetlands.
Water is accessible regularly but differs from fresh with rain to hugely saline and dry salt. A rocky shore can be divided into a spray zone which is also known as the Supratidal Zone and an intertidal zone. On most shores, the intertidal zone can be seperated into these following subzones: high tide zone, middle tide zone, and low tide zone. The low tide zone is mostely submerged. Its only exposed at low tide and for a longer time period of time during extremely low tides.
The low tide zone is filled with life. The most outstanding difference with this subregion to the other three is that there is much more marine vegetation, especially seaweeds. There is a great biodiversity as well. Organisms in this zone generally are not well adapted to periods of dryness and tempature extremes.Some of the organisms in this area are abalone, chitons, crabs, green algae, sea stars, and mussels. These creatures and others in this area can grow to much greater sizes than in the other three intertidal subregions due to the better water coverage.
The water is shallow enough to allow plenty of light to reach the vegetation to allow substantial photosynthetic activity, and the salinity is at almost normal levels. It's also protected from large predators such as large fish because of the wave action and the water still being shallow.
The middle tide zone is submerged and flooded for equal periods of time per tide cycle. The middle tide zone has a very high population of marine vegetation. Organisms are...