Saline water in the context of "Hudson Bay"

Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, plants, algae, fungi, protists, single-celled microorganisms and associated viruses living in the saline water of marine habitats, either the sea water of marginal seas and oceans, or the brackish water of coastal wetlands, lagoons, estuaries and inland seas. As of 2023, more than 242,000 marine species have been documented, and perhaps two million marine species are yet to be documented. An average of 2,332 new species per year are being described. Marine life is studied scientifically in both marine biology and in biological oceanography.

By volume, oceans provide about 90% of the living space on Earth, and served as the cradle of life and vital biotic sanctuaries throughout Earth's geological history. The earliest known life forms evolved as anaerobic prokaryotes (archaea and bacteria) in the Archean oceans around the deep sea hydrothermal vents, before photoautotrophs appeared and allowed the microbial mats to expand into shallow water marine environments. The Great Oxygenation Event of the early Proterozoic significantly altered the marine chemistry, which likely caused a widespread anaerobe extinction event but also led to the evolution of eukaryotes through symbiogenesis between surviving anaerobes and aerobes. Complex life eventually arose out of marine eukaryotes during the Neoproterozoic, and which culminated in a large evolutionary radiation event of mostly sessile macrofaunae known as the Avalon Explosion. This was followed in the early Phanerozoic by a more prominent radiation event known as the Cambrian Explosion, where actively moving eumetazoan became prevalent. These marine life also expanded into fresh waters, where fungi and green algae that were washed ashore onto riparian areas started to take hold later during the Ordovician before rapidly expanding inland during the Silurian and Devonian, paving the way for terrestrial ecosystems to develop.

The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as oceans (in descending order: the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Antarctic/Southern Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean), and are themselves mostly divided into seas, gulfs and subsequent bodies of water. The ocean contains 97% of Earth's water and is the primary component of Earth's hydrosphere, acting as a huge reservoir of heat for Earth's energy budget, as well as for its carbon cycle and water cycle, forming the basis for climate and weather patterns worldwide. The ocean is essential to life on Earth, harbouring most of Earth's animals and protist life, originating photosynthesis and therefore Earth's atmospheric oxygen, still supplying half of it.

Ocean scientists split the ocean into vertical and horizontal zones based on physical and biological conditions. Horizontally the ocean covers the oceanic crust, which it shapes. Where the ocean meets dry land it covers relatively shallow continental shelfs, which are part of Earth's continental crust. Human activity is mostly coastal with high negative impacts on marine life. Vertically the pelagic zone is the open ocean's water column from the surface to the ocean floor. The water column is further divided into zones based on depth and the amount of light present. The photic zone starts at the surface and is defined to be "the depth at which light intensity is only 1% of the surface value" (approximately 200 m in the open ocean). This is the zone where photosynthesis can occur. In this process plants and microscopic algae (free-floating phytoplankton) use light, water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients to produce organic matter. As a result, the photic zone is the most biodiverse and the source of the food supply which sustains most of the ocean ecosystem. Light can only penetrate a few hundred more meters; the rest of the deeper ocean is cold and dark (these zones are called mesopelagic and aphotic zones).

Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism (or microbe) is any microscopic living organism or virus, which is invisibly small to the unaided human eye without magnification. Microorganisms are very diverse. They can be single-celled or multicellular and include bacteria, archaea, viruses, and most protozoa, as well as some fungi, algae, and animals, such as rotifers and copepods. Many macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile stages. Some microbiologists also classify viruses as microorganisms, but others consider these as non-living.

Marine microorganisms have been variously estimated to make up between 70 and 90 percent of the biomass in the ocean. Taken together they form the marine microbiome. Over billions of years this microbiome has evolved many life styles and adaptations and come to participate in the global cycling of almost all chemical elements. Microorganisms are crucial to nutrient recycling in ecosystems as they act as decomposers. They are also responsible for nearly all photosynthesis that occurs in the ocean, as well as the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients and trace elements. Marine microorganisms sequester large amounts of carbon and produce much of the world's oxygen.

Marine prokaryotes are marine bacteria and marine archaea. They are defined by their habitat as prokaryotes that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. All cellular life forms can be divided into prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are organisms whose cells have a nucleus enclosed within membranes, whereas prokaryotes are the organisms that do not have a nucleus enclosed within a membrane. The three-domain system of classifying life adds another division: the prokaryotes are divided into two domains of life, the microscopic bacteria and the microscopic archaea, while everything else, the eukaryotes, become the third domain.

Prokaryotes play important roles in ecosystems as decomposers recycling nutrients. Some prokaryotes are pathogenic, causing disease and even death in plants and animals. Marine prokaryotes are responsible for significant levels of the photosynthesis that occurs in the ocean, as well as significant cycling of carbon and other nutrients.

Marine protists are defined by their habitat as protists that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Life originated as marine single-celled prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) and later evolved into more complex eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the more developed life forms known as plants, animals, fungi and protists. Protists are the eukaryotes that cannot be classified as plants, fungi or animals. They are mostly single-celled and microscopic. The term protist came into use historically as a term of convenience for eukaryotes that cannot be strictly classified as plants, animals or fungi. They are not a part of modern cladistics because they are paraphyletic (lacking a common ancestor for all descendants).

Most protists are too small to be seen with the naked eye. They are highly diverse organisms currently organised into 18 phyla, but not easy to classify. Studies have shown high protist diversity exists in oceans, deep sea-vents and river sediments, suggesting large numbers of eukaryotic microbial communities have yet to be discovered. There has been little research on mixotrophic protists, but recent studies in marine environments found mixotrophic protists contribute a significant part of the protist biomass. Since protists are eukaryotes (and not prokaryotes) they possess within their cell at least one nucleus, as well as organelles such as mitochondria and Golgi bodies. Many protist species can switch between asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction involving meiosis and fertilization.

Marine viruses are defined by their habitat as viruses that are found in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Viruses are small infectious agents that can only replicate inside the living cells of a host organism, because they need the replication machinery of the host to do so. They can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.

When not inside a cell or in the process of infecting a cell, viruses exist in the form of independent particles called virions. A virion contains a genome (a long molecule that carries genetic information in the form of either DNA or RNA) surrounded by a capsid (a protein coat protecting the genetic material). The shapes of these virus particles range from simple helical and icosahedral forms for some virus species to more complex structures for others. Most virus species have virions that are too small to be seen with an optical microscope. The average virion is about one one-hundredth the linear size of the average bacterium.

Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers. The word comes from the Middle Dutch root brak. Certain human activities can produce brackish water, in particular civil engineering projects such as dikes and the flooding of coastal marshland to produce brackish water pools for freshwater prawn farming. Brackish water is also the primary waste product of the salinity gradient power process. Because brackish water is hostile to the growth of most terrestrial plant species, without appropriate management it can be damaging to the environment (see article on shrimp farms).

Technically, brackish water contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of salt per litre—more often expressed as 0.5 to 30 parts per thousand (‰), which is a specific gravity of between 1.0004 and 1.0226. Thus, brackish covers a range of salinity regimes and is not considered a precisely defined condition. It is characteristic of many brackish surface waters that their salinity can vary considerably over space or time. Water with a salt concentration greater than 30‰ is considered saline.