What is a coelacanth?

What is a coelacanth?

A coelacanth is a ‘living fossil’ found in the sea. Scientists thought this fish had died out millions of years ago, until 1938 when a coelacanth was caught off East Africa. Since then, others have also been found in the Indian Ocean, and off the islands of Indonesia.

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What is a marine mammal?

What is a marine mammal?

Marine means ‘of the sea’. So, a marine mammal is one that lives in the sea. They have some things in common with the mammals that live on land. They have lungs and breathe air. They give birth to young ones, and nurse them with milk. Scientists believe that the ancestors of the marine mammals that we see today lived on land.

Their bodies adapted to live in the sea over the ages. Marine mammals vary in appearance and ways in which they live. Some like whales and dolphins cannot survive on land and live all the time in water. Seals, sea lions and walruses live both on land and sea. They are called pinnipeds and come ashore to rest and to raise their young ones.

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What is a lagoon?

What is a lagoon?

A lagoon is a body of comparatively shallow salt water separated from the deeper sea by shallow or exposed sandbank, coral reef, or similar feature. Thus, the enclosed body of water behind a barrier reef or enclosed by an atoll reef is called a lagoon.

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What is a knot?

What is a knot?
A knot is a measure of speed at sea. The term comes from a method used by sailors in olden days. A piece of wood was tied to a rope that had a knot tied in it at every 14.4 metres. The wood would be thrown into the sea and it pulled the rope after it. The speed would be calculated by counting the knots dragged out in 28 seconds. One knot equals 1.85 kilometres per hour.

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What is a hurricane?

What is a hurricane?

A hurricane is a severe storm system with heavy rain accompanied by extremely violent winds. Several low pressure systems join together to suck up huge quantities of warm wet air that cause driving rain and thunderstorms.

As more and more air is sucked up, the winds become stronger and stronger. Hurricanes occur mostly in the tropical regions of the Atlantic Ocean. They are called typhoons in the Pacific Ocean, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean.

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What is a devil fish?

What is a devil fish?

“Devil fish” is another name for the giant manta ray. It is the largest among all ray fish, which are fish with flattened bodies. Some manta ray fish or devil fish have a wing span of up to 7 metres across. It uses its broad fins to swim easily through the water. Its “horns” are used to guide plankton into its mouth. Though the devil fish looks very fearsome, it is actually a gentle giant that will even allow divers to hitch a ride by clinging to its body.

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What is a cyclone?

What is a cyclone?

A cyclone is an area of low atmospheric pressure characterized by inward spiraling winds that spin clockwise in the southern hemisphere. The word “cyclone” is derived from the Greek word “Cyclos” meaning the coils of a snake. To Henri Peddington, a British-Indian scientist, the tropical storms in the Bay of Bengal and in the Arabian Sea appeared like the coiled serpents of the sea and he named these storms as “Cyclones”. A full-grown cyclone is a violent whirl in the atmosphere 150 to 1000 km across, 10 to 15 km high.

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What is a coral reef?

What is a coral reef?

The coral reef is made by coral polyps, which are small anemone-like creatures with soft bodies. Each polyp builds a protective skeleton round its body form calcium carbonate (limestone). As it grows, it develops a filament from which another polyp sprouts. This also builds a protective skeleton around itself. In due course, the reef grows upwards and outwards, the outer layer consisting of living coral growing on the skeletons of dead coral inside. Coral reefs are found in warm clear, tropical waters.

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What is a continental slope?

What is a continental slope?
The continental slope is much steeper than the shelf, and is farther away from the shore. The slope is often cut with underwater canyons. Much of it is covered with a coat of soft ooze, where the shells of billions of tiny plants and animals that once lived in the surface waters, can be found.

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What is a bay?

What is a bay?
A bay is an area of water bordered by land on three sides. Bays form where weak rocks are eroded by the sea, leaving bands of stronger rocks. A bay may be only metres across, or it could be hundreds of kilometres wide.

What is a bathyscaphe?

What is a bathyscaphe?

A bathyscaphe is a container to take men to the bottom of the sea. it can travel up or down and can withstand tremendous pressures. Trieste is the bathyscaphe that took two men to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench in 1960.

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What height can waves reach?

What height can waves reach?

Waves can reach enormous heights. The highest natural wave ever recorded is 34 metres, which is 20 times the height of an average person, or about as tall as three houses placed one on top of the other!

What happens when there is an earthquake under the sea?

What happens when there is an earthquake under the sea?

An underwater earthquake creates huge shock waves. These shock waves cause immense tidal waves known as tsunamis.

Tsunamis can travel many thousands of kilometres through the sea, before finally breaking on land. They cause death and destruction, wiping away lives and property mercilessly. In 1992, tsunami washed away two thirds of an entire island in Indonesia. Recently on 26 December, 2004 tsunami waves in the Indian Ocean caused disaster in many countries including India. Originated from Sumatra, it was biggest tsunami disaster ever recorded.