The document summarizes information about the Mediterranean Sea, including its climate, plants, and animals. It discusses temperature patterns in the sea as well as rainfall patterns. It provides examples of common animal species found in the Mediterranean like loggerhead turtles, sharks, whales, and fish. It also mentions plant species and discusses threats facing populations like overfishing, pollution, and invasive species. Food chains and webs are described showing energy transfer between phytoplankton and species like whales. Threats to populations from increased human activity and diseases are explained.

1. MEDITERRANEAN SEA
Juan de Elia, Abril Teran Frias, Oliverio Llobet, Marcos Okecki and Francisco Aresi
TASK 1
Climate:
Temperature:
In absolute terms, the warmest parts are the southern and eastern Mediterranean, where
sea surface temperatures are still mostly above 27 °C and locally up to 29 °C. Central parts
are around 25-27 °C, while northern parts are closer to 24-26 °C.
Rainfall:
● Poleward extension and expansion of the subtropical anticyclone over the oceans
bring subsiding air to the region in summer, with clear skies. When the anticyclone
moves in winter, it is replaced by traveling, frontal cyclones with their attendant
precipitation. This means that in winter there are more precipitations than in the
summer.
● The excess in precipitable water is transported from the Mediterranean Sea to
Central Europe causing stronger precipitation extremes over that region. Our findings
suggest that Mediterranean Sea surface warming amplifies Central European
precipitation extremes.
Plants and animals:
Animals​:
Loggerhead Turtles;

2. The carnivorous loggerhead turtle is the Mediterranean's most common turtle. One of the
largest of the Chelonia sea turtles, the reddish brown loggerhead carries more of the
encrusting organisms, like barnacles, on its shell than other marine turtle. Highly migratory,
the loggerhead turtles are known to have made some of the longest journeys of all the
marine turtle species. Being migratory has made the turtles subject to accidental capture in
the nets of the world's fisheries.
Sharks and Rays;
Several types of sharks and rays are found in the Mediterranean. This includes the shortfin
mako shark, the probeagle shark, the giant devil ray and the seabed-hugging Maltese ray.
However, the great white shark is among the 30 species of sharks and rays at risk for
extinction, according to the National Geographic website.
Whales;
About 20 different species of whales and dolphins are found in the Mediterranean with eight
species being residents. This includes the sperm whale, orca, bottlenose dolphin and the
common dolphin. The common dolphin, once the most abundant species of dolphin in the
Mediterranean, is now classified as endangered, according to the Whales and Dolphins
Conservation Society.
Marine Fish;
Marine fish found in the Mediterranean include commercial species like sea bass, hake, blue
fin tuna and dusky grouper. However, the fish are all threatened with extinction, according to
the International Union for Conservation of Nature website. There are more than 40 species
of marine fish in the Mediterranean that can disappear in the next few years with 12 species
of bony fish also threatened with extinction.

3. Pufferfish;
The poisonous pufferfish is one of more than 900 species of alien fish that in the last few
decades have been found in the coastal regions of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The
invasion is changing the whole food chain, according to the Physorg website.
Sea plants:
Water pennywort, White lotus, Water hyacinth and Neptune grass are some of the sea
plants most present in the Mediterranean sea. However 15% of the sea plants from the
mediterranea are at risk of extinction due to pollution.
TASK 2
Food web:
It’s similar to a food chain but it is larger. A food web (or food cycle) is the natural
interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an
ecological community. Another name for food web is consumer-resource system.

4. Food chain:
WHALES --->PELAGIC SQUIDS ---> EPIPELAGIC FISHES ---> MICROZOOPLANCTON
AND CRUSTACEAN ---> PHYTOPLANCTON
a.
1. Producer
2. Primary Consumer
3. Secondary Consumer
4. Tertiary Consumer
5. Quaternary Consumer
b.
Arrows on a food chain, or food web, represent the flow of energy. The placement of the
arrows in a food chain or food web is very important. The arrows always show the direction
of the energy as it is transferred from one organism to another.
TASK 3
1) Population; A community of animals, plants, or humans among whose members
interbreeding occurs.
2) There are 15 populations in our food web.
3)
● The increase of human population:​ When the population increases there is more
people in the beaches which means that there will be more waste in the sea. This
show us how our population increases and because of our wastes, seas populations
are decreasing.
● Overfishing:​ Another reason why the populations in the sea, are affected is because
of the overfishing. This means catching the most fish as possible which makes it

5. difficult to let some fish to reproduce and repopulate the sea. Letting this happen will
have a very big consequence which is not having enough fish to feed the people.
● Factories:​ Factories will leave toxic materials in the sea which will affect the
populations in it because this toxic material will kill them.
● Diseases: ​The diseases that we people carry may affect the sea population making
them also sick and killing them.
4) If a disease breaks out in epipelagic fishes, the number of them will decrease
massively,and make many other populations also go down significantly. Pelagic sharks,
toothed whales, dolphins, birds, large tunas, billfishes and small tunas are a great example
of this because they will have less food to eat, affecting their population as well. On the other
hand, Macrozooplankton's population will increase because their prey will be reduced a lot.
5) To increase the amount of produced food from plants, we can increase the agricultural
land. We also can use effective fertilizers (green revolution) to produce more food. However,
there is a limit for agricultural land, and I believe we are using fertilizers at max. However, if
we are able to speed up the growth of the plants, it should help. But in our food web would
not be present because the phytoplantoms are under water.
TASK 4
1.
Acid rain​: rainfall made so acidic by atmospheric pollution that it causes environmental
harm.. The main cause is the industrial burning of coal and other fossil fuels, the waste
gases from which contain sulphur and nitrogen oxides which combine with atmospheric
water to form acids.
Global warming: ​a gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere
generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide,
CFCs, and other pollutants.
Overfishing: ​ deplete the stock of fish in (a body of water) by excessive fishing.
Eutrophication: ​excessive richness of nutrients in a lake or other body of water, frequently
due to run-off from the land, which causes a dense growth of plant life.
Raw sewage: ​Sewage that has not yet been processed or treated to separate and remove
contaminants.
Plastic pollution: ​the accumulation of plastic objects and particles (e.g.: plastic bottles and
much more) in the Earth's environment that adversely affects wildlife, wildlife habitat, and
humans.
2. Plastic is a cheap material most business use on their products. In the last decade plastic
have been overused and disposed on the ocean. Plastics affect the ocean environment
massively as plastics can't decompose. This causes water to get contaminated and results in

6. animals eating the plastics and microplastics, consuming their toxins, and, as a result,
causing many species to be now extinct or in danger of extinction.
3. This big problem could be solved by reducing the use of plastic products, recycling trash
and stop consuming one used Plastic products. Many plastics can be easily replaced, as
using metal cups for coffee, metal straws and reusable bags.
4. To encourage people to beat plastic pollution we could firstly explain in which ways our
use of plastics can be reduced. For example, by not accepting plastic bags in supermarkets
or straws in restaurants. Moreover, plastics which we cannot avoid, we should look for ways
to make the greater use of it and to prevent them from arriving the ocean. By communicating
the tragic consequences, not only for the environment but also for humans, it is really
possible that the audience will get the message better. An activity for them could consist in
looking for measures to reduce the plastic use, or inventing ways in which plastics could be
replaced by other existing or new objects.