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| Question | Answer |
| Oceans | Bodies of water that surround continents which usually have high concentrations of salt |
| Sea | Bodies of water that are surrounded by land, which usually consist of salt water |
| Convection currents | Cause plate movement below the earth's crust, and form oceanic and continental features |
| Divergent plate boundary | Boundary where tectonic plates spread apart, and magma rises and then is cooled |
| Convergent plate boundary | Boundary where plates move closer together, and crust is destroyed in this collision |
| Transform plate boundary | Boundary where tectonic plates slide past each other but no new plate material is formed or destroyed |
| Hot Spot | A very hot area in the mantle creates a hot spot where volcanoes can form in the middle of tectonic plates |
| Guyot | A seamount that has a flat top due to either erosion, or a previously sunken volcanic island |
| Abyssal Plain | The largest part of the ocean floor that consist of a fairly deep level plain. Starts at the end of a continental slope, and is featureless except for seamounts, ridges, guyots and volcanic islands. |
| Continental shelf | A relatively flat and shallow area of seabed that stretches from the coast to the edge of the shelf where it suddenly drops to the ocean floor. |
| Continental slope | The edge of a continental shelf where the ocean floor drops down steeply to an abyssal plain |
| Submarine canyon | The result of 'landslides' found along the continental slope. Deep divots in the slope. |
| Abyssal hill | A small hill that rises from the abyssal plain, no more than a few hundred meters |
| Seamount | A volcano that has not reached all the way to the surface of the water to be considered a volcanic island |
| Oceanic trench | A deep depression that is found along the edges of the ocean floor. Usually found where two plates collide and one is forced under the mantle |
| Thermocline | The temperature in the top 500 m of water decreases at a steady rate, however after that temperatures take a sharp change. |
| Salinity | The salt content of the ocean water, measured in ppm |
| Thermohaline circulation | The oceanic conveyor belt that includes both subsurface currents and surface currents |
| La Niña | A phenomenon caused by very strong trade winds that cause warm water to be pushed further west |
| El Niño | A phenomenon caused by weak trade winds that cause warm water to be collected in the east |
| Overfishing | To continuously catch more fish than the system can naturally produce |
| Biotic | Living factors in an ecosystem |
| Abiotic | Nonliving factors in an ecosystem |
| Eutrophication | A process by which nutrients, particularly phosphorous and nitrogen, become highly concentrated in a body of water, leading to an increased growth of organisms such as algae or cyanobacteria |
| Red Tides | A red, orange or brown colouration of the water caused by a bloom or population explosion of algae; many cause serious environmental harm and threaten the health of humans and animals |
| Currents | Mass movements of surface water produced by prevailing winds blowing over the oceans |
| Exclusive Economic Zone | Areas extending 200 nautical miles (370 km) from shore over which countries have sovereign rights for resource exploration |
| Territorial waters | Area that extends from 0 to 12 nautical miles from a countries coastline where the same law on apply |
| Polyp | A strand of many amino acids linked together by peptide bonds from which coral reefs are formed. It is an organism. |
| Fringing reef | A coral reef that develops as a narrow band close to a shore |
| Barrier reef | A coral reef surrounding an island or lying parallel to the shore of a continent, separated from land by a deep lagoon. Coral debris islands may form along the reef. |
| Atoll | A ring shaped reef composed largely of coral. These features are quite common in the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean |
| Mangroves | Salt-tolerant forests of trees that grow along tropical coastlines in the interdital zone. |
| Drift nets | Transparent nets that drift overnight catching anything within a 2 to 90 km radius |
| Bottom drag nets | Turn the ocean floor into a waste land by dragging them along the sea floor |
| Dynamite fishing | Coral is blown up to stun the fish along them and causing them to float on top of the water. |
| Cyanide fishing | Cyanide is emptied into the ocean, poured on top of a reef and the fish that die will float at the surface |
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