Rock pools are left behind after the tide goes out. Big or small they provide a home for a wide variety of organisms.
Rock pools can provide shelter for small organisms to escape larger predators that are to big or that cannot survive in rock pool conditions.
The food web diagram shows that fish are the predators in this ecosystem. They eat all other organisms except for bacteria.
Fish, crabs, octopus, jellyfish, snails, starfish, bivalves, sponges, worms and bacteria are all consumers in the rock pool ecosystem.
Plankton, algae and seagrasses are the primary producers. All the energy has come from them. They convert the suns energy through photosynthesis to make their own food.
The energy flows through the ecosystem until bacteria decompose it.
The energy then flows through the food chain starting with the producers that eat bacteria and the plants that use the minerals.
The abiotic factors that effect rock pools can cause the destruction of all the organisms that live there if they are not right.
Shallow rock pools that heat up at low tide during the day can have water evaporated from them.
As this continues more of the oceans minerals get deposited in the rock pool. This increases salinity. The water gets very salty and as a result little or no organisms can live there.
Rock pools that have a lot of mud in them cannot support a lot of life. The murky water drowns out the sun and makes photosynthesis difficult.
Deep rock pools can have the same effect. The light doesn't reach the bottom and no plant can live there. The plants are important because they produce oxygen in the rock pools. If there are not enough plants the organisms can be starved of oxygen.
The relationships between the organisms in a rock pool are very complex. If one condition changes it may only affect one type of organism but it effects all organisms living there.
This makes the rock pool ecosystem very fragile and needs to be left alone from outside interferences.
