Abstract
Flowing incessantly over 71 percent of the earth’s surface is a watery mass known as the sea. This milieu, which has a volume of approximately 315 million cubic miles, offers a great number of distinctive habitats to a rich diversity of biotic species. Organisms must be functionally adapted to withstand the particular set of environmental parameters which they experience in these diverse habitats, or they will perish. To set the stage for understanding physiological adaptation of marine organisms, this chapter will provide a general account of the dominant abiotic factors associated with the sea. Specific environmental characteristics of different habitat-types will be discussed in detail in later chapters.
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Vernberg, W.B., Vernberg, F.J. (1972). The Sea. In: Environmental Physiology of Marine Animals. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65334-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65334-6_2
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