Marine food web

A marine food web is the network of feeding relationships among organisms in ocean and coastal ecosystems. It links energy transfer from primary producers through consumers and decomposers.

Marine primary production: The creation of organic matter by photosynthetic and chemosynthetic organisms in marine environments. It supplies much of the organic matter that enters marine food webs.
Phytoplankton: Microscopic photosynthetic organisms that drift in aquatic environments. They are major primary producers at the base of many marine food webs.
Ecopath: A mass-balance modeling approach for describing energy flows among groups in an ecosystem. Ecopath models quantify feeding links and energy flows in marine ecosystems.
Overfishing: The removal of fish from a population faster than it can replenish itself. Removing abundant consumers or predators can reorganize marine feeding relationships.
Trophic level: A position in a food chain or web defined by an organism’s feeding relationships. It describes how marine organisms are grouped by their routes of energy acquisition.
Zooplankton: Small drifting animals and animal-like organisms that feed on plankton or other particles. Many marine consumers depend on zooplankton as prey.
Ecosystem-based fisheries management: Fisheries management that considers interactions among species, habitats, and human activities. Food-web relationships reveal how fishing one species can affect others.
Ocean acidification: The decline in seawater pH caused primarily by absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Acidification can affect organisms whose roles support or connect marine food webs.
Trophic cascade: A chain of indirect ecological effects caused when changes at one trophic level affect others. Predator changes can propagate through marine food webs to prey and producers.
Krill: Small shrimp-like crustaceans that form dense swarms in the ocean. Krill transfer planktonic production to fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.

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