Question | Answer |
Aquatic animals | Swimming animals are called this because aqua is a latin word that means "water" |
Nektonic | Come from the Greek word for "swimming" These animals get from one place to another by propelling, gliding or paddling through the water |
Bethnic | Animals that cannot swim but scurry, crawl, hop, scoot, burrow, or slither across the bottom of a body of water. |
Sessile | These animals stick themselves to one place and sit there. Comes from the latin word sessilis |
Plankton | Animals that drift; they may be able to swim weakly, but not strong enough to swim against the current |
Phytoplankton | More like plants and make their own food through photosynthesis |
Zooplankton | More like animals, they need to eat to get fooed. |
Mammals | Warmblooded creatures that breathe air, give birth to live young that drink milk from their mother's body. They also have hair and a backbone. |
Reptiles | Cold blooded creatures that have scales, breathe air, lay eggs, and have a backbone |
Amphibians | Cold blooded creatures that breathe air, lay eggs, have a backbone but do not have scales |
Fishes | Cold blooded creatures with a backbone, scales and use gills to breathe underwater |
Vertabrates | Creature that has a backbone |
Invertabrate | Creatures that don't have a backbone |
Head of a River | The beginning of a river |
Mouth of a River | The end of the river |
Surface currents | Currents that form on the surface of the ocean, usually formed by the winds |
Gyres | surface current that is mostly circular |
High tide | When the water comes way up onto the shore |
Low tide | When the water pulls way back and exposes a lot of the beach |
Spring tide | During a new moon or a full moon, thehigh tide is higher than usual and the low tide is lower than usual because of the gravitational pull of the sun and moon |
Neap tide | During a quarter moon, the high tide is lower and the low tide is higher because of the gravitational pull of the sun and moon |
The 4 oceans | Pacific, Atlantic, Indian and Arctic |
Seas | Seas are smaller than oceans, but made up of salt water. They are mostly surrounded by land and usally joined to an ocean on at least one side |
Fresh water | Not salty like the ocean |
Estuary | The place where a river meets with an ocean or sea |
Continental shelf | The part of the continent that is under water; it slopes gradually downward |
Continental slope | The drop off into the deep ocean at the end of the continental shelf |
Continental rise | Near the very end of the drop off, there is a much more gentle slope |
Abyssal plain | The deep dark ocean floor at the end of the continental rise |
Sunlit zone | Part of the abyss that is well lit by the sun |
Twilight zone | Part of the abyss that is fairly dark with very little sunlight coming through. |
Midnight zone | Part of the abyss that is deeper and no light from the sun ever reaches this deep into the ocean and causes it to be darker than midnight |
bioluminescence | the ability of some animals to make their own light |
submersibles | Underwater spaceships designed by man |