The other stuff, from the plankton to mangroves to the Triangle of Diversity.
ALGAE COMES IN EIGHT GAZILLION DIFFERENT FORMS, from tiny little slimy green stuff to giant kelp, and to most of us it seems obnoxious and a thing to be ignored, if not despised. Except that algae is the foundation of the food chain, a pioneer in the evolution of life, and essential to our existence. Algae uses sunlight to photosynthesize the carbon dioxide and hydrogen in water into the simple sugars that are nutrients for
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1) WATER IS ONE OF THE MOST ABUNDANT SUBSTANCES ON OUR PLANET. All but three percent of it is contained in the oceans, which cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. They’re home to some 97 percent of the earth’s biomass – overwhelmingly represented in microscopic organisms. 2) Water is wet because its molecular structure of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms creates weak positive-negative bonding, making water molecules just strong enough – and
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HERE IS ONE REASON I LOVE THE UNDERWATER WORLD: Coral reefs are rightly compared to rainforests for their astonishing diversity of life but reefs are more just than settings where living creatures are abundant. On reefs, virtually everything represents a living plant or animal, constructed by them and of them – even the sand. They’re beautiful, fascinating, instructive. In fact, they’re also a roadmap to life’s earliest origins. RETHINK “ANIMALS” It’s true that you have
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