Question

What is the role of the anomalous behavior of water in preserving aquatic life in regions of cold climate?

Answer 1

Hint: The cold climate is present mostly at the places where the sun rays are deficient like near the poles of the earth. But life still exists there and fishes are still found there. This means that the fishes and other organisms are still able to take up the oxygen from the water. That means the water is not available in frozen conditions. We’ll see how this is possible.

Complete step-by-step solution:
This phenomenon of water is called the anomalous behavior of water. This could be explained by the fact that substance having more density sinks in water whereas substance having lesser density floats on the water.
Water has a unique property that its density is not constant and its density behaves in a certain way that the density of water is maximum at $4^{\circ }C$. Both above and below $4^{\circ }C$, its density decreases.
Now, more density means that water at $4^{\circ }C$ will sink or go to the bottom of the ocean as compared to water at $0^{\circ }C$. This suggests that the water at $0^{\circ }C$ is on the top of the surface of ocean water whereas the water at $4^{\circ }C$ will be present at a lower portion of ice ($0^{\circ }C$ water).
This is the reason why only the upper layer of the ocean or lake gets frozen in a cold climate and the lower layer still is maintained at a constant temperature of $4^{\circ }C$.
Hence in cold climatic conditions, all the fishes and organisms go to the bottom of the lake. And hence saves their lives.

Note: This is how the life of aquatic organisms is still alive and could be found in colder regions. Also, when the layer of ice is being formed, there comes a state that the thickness of ice is enough that all the heat needed to be extracted from water so as to form ice, goes directly into the atmosphere. Hence the thickness of the ice bed also gets saturated.