Rose La Corto, age 12, of Houston, Texas for her question:
Some of the rules are the same for life in the ocean and life on land. In both cases, all the animals depend upon plant life, either directly or indirectly. On land, the rabbits graze in the meadows and the deer browse in the woods. They feed directly on plants and in turn they are eaten by the foxes and the mountain lions. In the sea, there are meadows of floating algae and plankton, forests of tall, trailing kelp,
This ocean plant life feeds a vast horde of sea‑dwellers. The tiny diatoms and single‑celled alga.e provide food for the shrimps, the baby fish and the wormy larvae. These little creatures are eaten by larger creatures. In the sea, as on land, the food supply begins with the plant world. And the plant world needs sunshine, whether on land or sea,
Even where the water is clearest and cleanest, sunlight pierces less than half a mile. Below the sunlit surface, the blacker‑than‑midnight abyss plunges down two or three miles. In this darkness, no plant can live. No ocean‑type bunnies can feed on greenery and themselves become food for bigger meat‑eaters. If there are creatures in the deep ocean, they must live in total darkness, without plant life and under the tremendous weight of the water above them.
Yet there are creatures who manage to endure under these harsh conditions, Much of their food is the crumbling decay which falls down, down from the sunlit surface. For all the little diatoms and floating seaweeds, the slick mackerel and even the big sharks and whales must either be eaten or finally break up and sink to the deep ocean floor. Down there in the darkness, all sorts of weird creatures wait for their dinner to come falling down.
Where the sunlight ends, a half mile below the surface, live the great squid, maybe 30 feet long. The huge sperm whales dive down to feed upon them. Further down, where the darkness begins, there are all manner of strange fishes never seen near the surface. Many are weird in shape and brightly colored. Some have feelers like fishing lines and most of the dwellers in the darkness are fitted with their own lights. The black abyss is dotted with a bright white light here, a. blue dot the„e and over there a row of red reflectors. The deep ocean swimmers seem to carry‑ their own traffic signals.
Deeper still we find the ocean floor and its covering of muddy ooze. Here too we find life. There are sponges and starfish and all manner of corals, And even on the floor of the arctic ocean there is a large assortment of sea going worms. So far we have only sampled the life in the deep ocean and much work is still to be done. There is much more to be learned about the tough little creatures who have learned to cope with life in the black and heavy midnight of the deep ocean.