The phosphorus cycle includes the following steps:

• Phosphorus in fertilizer, rocks, and mountains is distributed by rain to nearby land and bodies of water
• Animals eat the plants grown by fertilizer. They expel the phosphorus as waste. It eventually reaches the water as runoff.
• Phosphorus is cycled through animals that live in water. It is eventually deposited into the ocean floor.
• Phosphates contribute to the sediment at the bottom of the water. That sediment becomes rock
• The ocean bed eventually becomes a mountain range over several millions of years because of normal geological functions
• The phosphorus in those mountain ranges is washed off into bodies of water and the cycle begins again and again.