Sea pansy

The sea pansy is a colonial cnidarian native to warm continental shelf waters of the New World. It is frequently found washed ashore on northeast Florida beaches following northeasterly winds or rough surf conditions. It also can often be found living intertidally completely buried in the sand. Its predator is the striped sea slug, Armina tigrina.

The sea pansy is a collection of polyps with different forms and functions. A single, giant polyp up to two inches in diameter forms the anchoring stem (peduncle). This peduncle can be distended to better anchor the colony in the substrate. The pansy-like body bears many small, anemone-like feeding polyps. A cluster of tentacleless polyps form an outlet valve that releases water to deflate the colony. If the colony is on a sand bar at low tide, it usually deflates and becomes covered with a thin film of silty sand. Small white dots between the feeding polyps are polyps that act as pumps to expand the deflated colony. The feeding polyps secrete a sticky mucus to trap tiny organisms suspended in the water. The colony’s rigidity and purple color come from calcium carbonate spicules throughout the polyps tissues.

Sea

A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land. More broadly, "the sea" is the interconnected system of Earth's salty, oceanic waters—considered as one global ocean or as several principal oceanic divisions. The sea moderates Earth's climate and has important roles in the water cycle, carbon cycle, and nitrogen cycle. Although the sea has been travelled and explored since prehistory, the modern scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly to the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s. The sea is conventionally divided into up to five large oceanic sections—including the IHO's four named oceans (the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic) and the Southern Ocean; smaller, second-order sections, such as the Mediterranean, are known as seas.

Owing to the present state of continental drift, the Northern Hemisphere is now fairly equally divided between land and sea (a ratio of about 2:3) but the South is overwhelmingly oceanic (1:4.7).Salinity in the open ocean is generally in a narrow band around 3.5% by mass, although this can vary in more landlocked waters, near the mouths of large rivers, or at great depths. About 85% of the solids in the open sea are sodium chloride. Deep-sea currents are produced by differences in salinity and temperature. Surface currents are formed by the friction of waves produced by the wind and by tides, the changes in local sea level produced by the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The direction of all of these is governed by surface and submarine land masses and by the rotation of the Earth (the Coriolis effect).

Sea (astronomy)

The Sea or the Water is an area of the sky in which many water-related, and few land-related, constellations occur. This may be because the Sun passed through this part of the sky during the rainy season.

Most of these constellations are named by Ptolemy:

Sometimes included are the ship Argo and Crater the Water Cup.

Some water-themed constellations are newer, so are not in this region. They include Hydrus, the lesser water snake; Volans, the flying fish; and Dorado, the swordfish.

See also

References

Sea (EP)

Sea EP is the second EP from Doves. It was self-released on the band's Casino Records label on 24 May 1999 on limited CD and 10" vinyl. The band dedicated the EP to Rob Gretton, who helped fund Doves' early releases as well as when the band played as Sub Sub. Rob died of a heart attack only a few days before the EP was released. In the music video for "Sea Song," the opening title card reads "For Rob."

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Jez Williams, Jimi Goodwin, and Andy Williams. 

Notes