The supralittoral zone, also known as the splash zone, spray zone or the supratidal zone, sometimes also referred to as the white zone, is the area above the spring high
tide
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another.
Tide tables ...
line, on
coastlines
The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...
and
estuaries
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environmen ...
, that is regularly splashed, but not submerged by ocean water. Seawater penetrates these elevated areas only during storms with high tides.
[Thurman et al., p. 512.]
Organisms here must cope also with exposure to air, fresh water from rain, cold, heat and
predation
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...
by land animals and seabirds. At the top of this area, patches of dark
lichens can appear as crusts on rocks. Some types of
periwinkles,
Neritidae
Neritidae, common name the nerites, is a taxonomic family of small to medium-sized saltwater and freshwater snails which have a gill and a distinctive operculum.
MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Neritininae Poey, 1852. Accessed through: ...
and detritus feeding
Isopoda commonly inhabit the lower supralittoral.
[Yip and Madl]
See also
*
Littoral zone
The littoral zone or nearshore is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal a ...
*
Sublittoral zone
Notes
References
* Thurman H.V. and Trujillo A.P. 1993.''Essentials of Oceanography''.Upper Saddle River, NJ:Prentice Hall
* Yip, Maricela and Madl, Pierre (1999
''Littoral''University of Salzburg
The University of Salzburg (german: Universität Salzburg), also known as the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (''Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg'', PLUS), is an Austrian public university in Salzburg municipality, Salzburg state, named af ...
.
Coastal geography
Oceanographical terminology
{{Ecology-stub