ABCS 318 Lecture 1

ABCS 318: AQUATIC
BIOLOGY
LECTURER:
JULIET EWOOL QUANSAH

General Overview
• Water Properties/Dissolved Substances
•The Open Sea and the Major Ecological Zones
•Coastal Waters
•Water Circulation and their Effects on Productivity
•Estuaries
•Mangrove Swamps
•Pollution
•Internal Assessment
LECTURE ONE
WATER PROPERTIES OF BIOLOGICAL

IMPORTANCE
&
Dissolved Substances
OVERVIEW
• Properties of Water
• Chemical Compositions
• Physical and Chemical Properties
Properties of Water
• Water is the substance that surrounds all marine and
freshwater organisms.
• The bulk of the bodies of aquatic plants and animals is
composed of water, and it is the medium in which various
chemical reactions take place, both inside and outside
living organisms.
Chemical Compositions
• Pure water is a very simple chemical compound composed of two atoms of
hydrogen (H) joined to one oxygen (O) atom.
• Expressed symbolically, it is H2O
• The hydrogen atoms are bonded to the oxygen asymmetrically such that
the two hydrogens are at one end of the molecule and the oxygen is at the
other.
• The bonding between the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen is via shared
electrons (i.e., carrying charge of negative electricity), each hydrogen
sharing its single electron with the oxygen.
Chemical Compositions
•The polar nature of the water molecule means that the hydrogen end
which is positive, will attract the negative, or oxygen, end of other water
molecules.
•This gives rise to weak bonds called hydrogen bonds, between adjacent
water molecules (Fig. 1.1)
It is this hydrogen bonding
between adjacent water
molecules and the polarity of
the water molecule that is
responsible for many of the
unique physical and chemical
properties of water.
Figure 1.1 Diagramatic representation of

series of water molecules, indicating the
polar nature of the molecules and the
hydrogen bonding
Physical and Chemical Properties
• Due to the hydrogen bonding, water tends to stick firmly to itself,
resisting external forces that would break these bonds.
• This is called cohesion.
• At air-water interfaces, the strength of cohesion forms a skin over the
water surface strong enough to support strong objects.
• This phenomenon is called surface tension.

• Viscosity is a property of a material that indicates the force necessary to
separate the molecules and allow passage of an object through the
liquid.
• Another set of properties concerns the effects of heat.
• Water, in order to evaporate, must absorb more heat in comparison
with other liquids of simple molecules.
• This means that the heat of vaporization of water is high – the highest
of most common substances.
• Related to this is the latent heat of fusion which is the
amount of heat gained per unit mass when a substance
changes from a solid to a liquid, or lost when it changes
from liquid to solid.
• The large values for both the heat of vaporization and latent
heat of fusion mean that it takes more heat to change the
temperature of a given quantity of water than virtually any
other common substance.
• Water also has a high heat capacity.
• Water has a peculiar density-temperature
relationship.
• Most liquids become denser as they are cooled.
• If cooled until they become solid, the solid phase of
such liquids is denser than the liquid phase.
• This is not true for water.
• Different water masses in the world’s oceans have
different densities due to their different temperatures
and salinities.
• Water masses may sink or rise through other water
masses depending on their relative densities and may
also spread out and flow horizontally.
• Such behavior is common in the world’s oceans, and such
density differences are responsible for deep ocean
currents.
Dissolved Substances
Seawater
• Seawater is water in which a variety of solids and gases
are dissolved.
• A 1,000-gram (g) sample of seawater will contain about
35 g of dissolved compounds collectively called salts.
• In other words, 96.5% of seawater is water and 3.5% is
dissolved substances.
• The total amount of dissolved material is termed the
salinity of the water.
• Dissolved substances include inorganic salts, organic
compounds derived from living organisms and
dissolved gasses.
• The greatest fraction of the dissolved material in
seawater is composed of inorganic salts present as ions.
• Six inorganic ions make up 99.28% by weight of the
solid matter: chloride, sodium, sulphur, (as sulphate),
magnesium, calcium and potassium ions (Table 1.2).
• Among the remaining 0.01% of dissolved
substances in seawater are several inorganic salts
that are crucial to marine organisms.
• Included here are the inorganic nutrients,

• phosphates and nitrates, required by plants to
synthesize organic material in photosynthesis,
• and silicon dioxide, required by diatoms and
radiolarians to construct their skeletons.
• Two gases dissolved in seawater are of metabolic
importance: oxygen and carbon dioxide.
• The solubility of gases in seawater is a function of
temperature: the lower the temperature, the greater the
solubility
• Oxygen is not distributed uniformly with depth in

the ocean.
• A typical vertical profile of the oxygen content of the ocean
shows a maximum amount in the upper 10-20 metres (m),
where the photosynthetic activities by plants and diffusion
from the atmosphere often lead to supersaturation (Fig.
1.3).
• The occurrence of the oxygen minimum zone is
usually attributed to biological activity depleting
the oxygen, coupled with the absence of both
photosynthetic activity and contact with the
atmosphere, which would otherwise permit
renewal,
• The increase in oxygen below the oxygen
minimum zone results from the influx of the
cold, oxygen-rich waters that originally sank at
high latitude.
END OF LECTURE ONE
SUMMARY
• Properties of Water
• Chemical Compositions
• Physical and Chemical
Properties
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ABCS 318: AQUATIC

JULIET EWOOL QUANSAH

•The Open Sea and the Major Ecological Zones

•Water Circulation and their Effects on Productivity

WATER PROPERTIES OF BIOLOGICAL

• Expressed symbolically, it is H2O

Figure 1.1 Diagramatic representation of

• This phenomenon is called surface tension.

• Included here are the inorganic nutrients,

• Oxygen is not distributed uniformly with depth in

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