Intertidal Zone
Intertidal zone is a special region. When the tide rises, organisms in the intertidal zone are well soaked in seawater, but when tide is on the ebb, creatures in the intertidal zone have to endure wide range of arid, hot and saline environment. Therefore, most of the intertidal zone organisms have unique ways to live against these changes. For example, some shellfishes hide themselves into shells or move to cave to avoid exposing to the sun directly and reduce water loss.

Because that all kinds of intertidal creatures have different adaptations to the environment, they are distributed in three banding regions, upper, middle, and lower intertidal regions. Upper region of intertidal zone usually are full of green algae, middle are brown alga and, in the lower, are red alga or coralline that are more resistant to tidal current. There are many marine creatures in the intertidal zone, such as echinoderms (sea urchins), mollusks (sea hares, oysters), arthropods (crabs, shrimps) and fishes. Some larvae of marine organisms hide in the intertidal zone first and go back to the ocean after they have enough ability to survive.

Intertidal zone is the closest oceanic place to the land and to human. Don’t forget to observe those amazing marine animals living in the intertidal zone next time when you are strolling at the sea shore, and by the way, be sure not to leave any garbage behind.

Tropical rain forests of the sea - the coral reef ecosystem
What will you think of when you hear the words “coral reef”? That’s a colorful world and a plenty of beautiful fishes swimming over there. The coral reef ecosystem is famous because of the richness of biodiversity, which makes it an important site of sightseeing. Coral reef area is also the main place for fishing. From ancient times to the present, human civilizations around costal areas are fully connected to coral reef ecosystem.

Because corals survive depending on photosynthetic reactions performed by symbiotic algae, coral reef are only distributed in the areas where the water is clean and allows sufficient sunlight, about 20 to 30 meters in depth. Few corals can live 80 meters deep.

General speaking, corals live in a salinity between 3.4% to 3.6% and a temperature between 20 to 28 degrees Celcius, and also need a solid base, like rock, reef, or conglomerate to live on. By different shapes, corals can be classified into reef, atoll, and barrier reef. Corals in Taiwan Kenting National Park form reef, as in Dongsha Marine National Park they form atoll.

Although there is plenty of creatures live in coral ecosystem, this area lack nutrients. Nutrients are absorbed by organisms very shortly after they were released into water. In this highly bio-diversed coral reef ecosystem, many creatures have evolved mutualism relationships.

All organisms play important roles in coral reef ecosystem. If any part was damaged or destroyed, it might affect the whole coral reef ecosystem. In order to prevent coral ecosystem from collapsing, we have to do more to protect them.

Exploring Life in the Inner Space.
Deep sea, a cold, dark, high pressure environment that we considered no organisms can be found in the older time, today, owing to the progress in diving technology, we knew that there are still organisms down there.
General speaking, deep sea means the area below 200 meters in depth, but the real deep sea without any light is below 1000 meters. In this environment, organisms feed on corpses, debris and excretion. Oxygen is transported by thermohaline circulation from the surface of seawater. To live in deep sea, organisms evolved some special characteristics. For example, 1) red body: red light is easily absorbed by water and creatures in red color are not easy to be found; 2) deep sea fishes usually have big eyes and big mouth with sharp teeth that make feeding more convenient; 3) others have luminous bodies in order to attract games, change body contour to avoid predators and communicate with each other; 4) with producing anti-pressure enzymes, organisms can prevent high pressure from hurting their bodies.
From 2001 to 2007, National Science Council published the results of Taiwan deep sea biodiversity research and discovered 523 Taiwan new recorded species and 80 world new species. This achievement not only set new record to deep sea species, but also gave us more knowledge about the variety of life forms.