Treebeard's Stumper 8 September 2000

Deep Secrets

Dunn Middle School is off to Catalina Island next week, so the ocean is on my mind. We all know about food chains and recycling, but isn't the ocean different? Here on land, plants and animals live and die, and their waste is quickly recycled back into the food chain by scavengers, especially bacteria and fungi. But in the deep ocean, the detritus of life sinks into the abyss, out of reach. There are scavengers in the depths, but they mostly stay there. How are marine ecosystems possible? Why doesn't the ocean run out of raw materials?

Answer

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