A School Teachers Guidebook to Marine Environmental Education ...

SCHOOLTEACHER’S GUIDE TO MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Coastal ecosystems are part of our environment. In the same way that
different plants and animals form a complex food web, coastal ecosystems
are also connected with each other. The connections, or links, may be for
example, through some fish feeding in one ecosystem (e.g. a coral reef)
but breeding in another (e.g. a mangrove forest). More direct links would
also include rivers bringing freshwater, dissolved nutrients and sediments
from inland to the coastal seas and the evaporation of the sea providing
moisture in the atmosphere which eventually falls as rain inland.
Coastal ecosystems are rich in marine plants and animals and provide
some important resources including fish, minerals and oil. Coastal
ecosystems also offer opportunity for recreation to both local people and
tourists. Coastal tourism is an important commercial activity for countries
in the western Indian Ocean.
Many different types of ecosystems are associated with coastal regions.
These include beaches, coral reefs, lagoons, mangroves and seagrass beds.
These ecosystems are interlinked and interrelated, and things that affect
one ecosystem may affect other ecosystems, even some distance away.
Some of these ecosystems may be distributed sequentially from the shore
to deep water, as shown below.
Distribution of coastal ecosystems
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