The Rocky Intertidal Shore

Alterations of environmental conditions appear constant to aquatic organisms that live within rocky shore ecosystems. The Zebra-top Snail was examined species within the following report, found on intertidal rocky shores of south-east and West Australia. The reaction and mass change of the Zebra-top Snail was examined whist carrying out this experiment. It was hypothesised that the Snails placed into higher salinity water will attempt to find higher ground, and their mass will be less than their original weight. The Snails were placed in water, each containing different amounts of salinity, as the rate of reaction was examined. The Snails placed in greater salinity showed a significant response in reaction within 10 minutes of observations.

12. In the Figure 5 profile, the coastline is within a few kilometers of the western end of the vertical cross section. From the coastline, water depth increases very gradually to about 40 m at 140 km from shore (western end of the profile). This segment of the vertical cross-section resembles the continental [(rise)(slope)(shelf)]

Limpets (Patella vulgate) live in algae rich environments on rocky shores. . It has been proposed that in more sheltered areas, limpet shells will grow to be flatter with a larger diameter, while in more exposed areas of coastline, they will grow a taller and narrower shell shape. To find out whether or not the shores of Aberdeen reflected this, samples were taken from two sites (Site A and Site B) along the Aberdeen coastline that varied in their exposure to wave action. The sites were chosen to provide two sample sites with a notable difference in their environment. In the more sheltered site A, limpets were not exposed to harsh waves, while at site B, there was significantly more wave action. Quadrats were used at both sites to provide an area of sampling for the limpets and they were placed around 5 meters from the waterline. The overall results from the study showed that there is a very strong relationship between diameter and height in Limpet shells and that there was an incredibly slight difference in the relationship between the two sites.

The lower shore, or low tide zone, is mostly submerged underwater. The most noticeable difference of this sub-region is the large diversity of different types of seaweeds. Organisms found in this zone are generally less adapted to periods of dryness. The creatures are generally the largest and most complex organisms on the shore as there are more sources of food as marine vegetation flourishes.

The Bay’s salinity varies widely from season to season and from year to year, depending on the amount of fresh water flowing from its rivers. The Bay tends to be fresher in spring, when snow melts and heavy rainstorms frequently fall. During the drier months, the Bay is usually saltier. Salinity also increases with depth. Fresh water remains at the surface because it is less dense than salt water. The water on the Bay’s eastern shore tends to be saltier than the water on the western side. This is due to two factors; most fresh water enters the Bay from its northern and western tributaries, and The Coriolis Force, a phenomenon caused by the earth’s rotation, pushes flowing water in the Northern Hemisphere to the right, causing saltier water to move up the Bay veers toward the eastern shore.

Although it supports a number of different organisms, Nudgee Beach lacks many of the fundamentals that make up a healthy and successful ecosystem. The first indicator of this is from the lack of birds present in the area. Although it has been noted for terrestrial bird species – such as kingfishers, pelicans, ibis, egrets, jabiru, stilts and heron – and wading bird species – such as golden plovers, curlews, tattlers and godwits – to have been spotted at Nudgee Beach and surrounding areas in the past; after a day’s worth of extensive observation and research, it was found that the birds observed were limited to magpie, ibis, great knot and eastern curlew species. To intensify this factor, at the time by which this lack of species was recorded, Nudgee Beach was expected to have started seeing tens of thousands of birds arrive for the migratory season [21]. This blatant lack of bird species diversity and quantity may have been due to the lack of small organisms within the ecosystem. The restricted number of small organisms at Nudgee Beach is detrimental to the entire ecosystem as these organisms make up the bottom levels of the food web and provide higher-level organisms with adequate amounts of food to consume. The smaller organisms expected to be observed – including; crustacean, shell, mollusc, lizard, frog, fish, worm, arachnid and insect species – was limited to the infrequent observation of crustacean, shell,

Table 2: Presence and occurrence of marine organisms in the surf zone of Pallarenda beach.

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(Salton Sea Symposium, 1998) However , the condition of the Sea has drastically changed and so has the amount of healthy living organisms in the Sea. By the 1980�s the water level rose greatly and gave way to abandoned businesses, deteriorating structures and empty beaches. The above was due to the fact that evaporation is the only outlet to the Salton Sea , in fact 1.35 million acre feet of water is lost each year , thus increasing its salinity even more. The salinity of the Salton Sea has increased to 45,000 parts per thousand or 45 PPT; the Pacific Ocean is currently 35 PPT.

Intertidal (mud) flats are shielded intertidal and shallow sub tidal areas (Quinn, 2014), with significant ecosystems that provide a diversity of highly productive, environmental habitats that are essential sources of food for fish during times of high tide, and for birds in low tide. The sediment composition of intertidal flats depends on the “interactions between the physical, chemical and biological processes” (Widdows, et al., 2004), but the sediment if mainly fine particles and mostly muds. The sediment itself can also either have vegetation growth or be a completely bare flat region. (Quinn, 2014).

The erosion of shorelines is a natural process that can have beneficial or adverse impacts on the creation and maintenance of habitats. Sands and gravels eroded from the shores of coastal bays maintain the beach as a natural barrier between the open water and coastal wetlands. Beaches move back and forth onshore, offshore and along shore with changing wave conditions. The finer-grained silts and clays derived from the erosion of shorelines are sorted and carried as far as the waters of wetlands or tidal flats, where benefits are derived from addition of the new material. However, excessively high sediment loads can smother submerged aquatic vegetation beds, cover shellfish beds and tidal flats, fill in riffle

The intertidal rocky shore of Caloundra Beach is inhabited by diverse range of biodiversity of animals and plants, many of which have developed high levels of adaptations throughout their existence. The very boundary of marine and terrestrial ecosystem, this environment is subjected to extremes of the physical environment such as temperature, desiccation, wave turbulence as well the ecological interactions that commonly occur in biotic communities (e.g. competition, predation). However Rocky intertidal shores are easily accessible by humans and provide an enjoyable opportunity for passive recreation and for science and environmental education as well.

The sediments in the intertidal zone are predominantly composed of silt and clay that display substantial distribution in grain size distribution due to hydrodynamic and vegetation cover changes, such as grass, mangroves and other plantations. Sediment pH, total Corg (%) and percentages of sand, silt and clay obtained from the samples of 13 sampling stations are summarized in Table 2, whilst sediment pH was in a narrow alkaline range of 7.2 to 8.6. Similarly, Corg varied little from 0.47 to 0.91 %. Such low Corg are consistent to other coastal regions of India (Chatterjee et al. 2007) and might be the result of marine sedimentation and mixing processes at the sediment-water interface where the rate of delivery, as well as rates of degradation by microbial-mediated processes can be high ( Canuel and Martens, 1993). This can be also related to poor absorbability of organics to negatively charged quartz grains, which predominate in sediments in this estuarine environment (Sarkar et al., 2004). The sediment samples also showed a variable admixture of sand (0.4 - 37.4 %), silt (24.4 - 66.7%) and clay (26.7 - 75.1 %). Previous studies demonstrated that fine-grained sediments facilitate the accumulation of heavier metals and organic matter contents (Bayen, 2012; Yu et al., 2012; Zahra et al., 2014).With respect to texture class, variable erosion and depositions in the study stations along with vigorous estuarine mixing, suspension-resuspension and flocculation-deflocculation can

The aim of this investigation is to look at the distribution of the ornate limpet, (Cellana Ornata) and the radiate limpet (Cellana Radians) on the rocky shore. We went to the rocky shore of Sirens rocks between Island Bay and Owhiro Bay, on Wellington’s South Coast. We are studying how our chosen organisms affect each other’s distribution patterns. We sampled in the low tide zone, mid tide zone, and high tide zone. The rocky shore we explored was 80 metre long, rocky terrain, bare rock platforms with rock gulley’s.

Another abiotic factor that helps the formations of different zones would be the tidal movement (aerial exposure) effecting the sea life shore community. The tidal zones we found at Siren’s Rocks are the sublittoral zone, low tide, mid tide, high tide and supralittoral zone. These are all on the data recorded by us at the rocky shore we researched.