Plankton in a Lab
If this doesn’t alarm you, you just can’t be alarmed. Since the 1950′s the amount of plankton in our oceans has dropped by 40%. The decline has been ongoing for at least a century according the Nature Journal.
Just in case you didn’t know, phytoplankton are a microscopic algae that is the bottom tier of the oceans food chain. It also provide half of the earths oxygen.
Let me put it bluntly. If we loose our plankton or planet will surely die. How quickly depends on how quickly the plankton die. If we lost all the plankton today. Animal life on this earth would begin dying in days and most of it would be dead within a week. After all animals can’t go long with out oxygen.
So what’s happening to all the plankton. Well according to the reserch:
In most regions tested, the phytoplankton decline seems to be the result of a 0.5–1.0 °C warming of the upper ocean over the past century. The warming leads to enhanced vertical ‘stratification’ of ocean layers, thus limiting the supply of nutrients from deeper waters to the surface.
Few days ago hundreds of dead fish were brought to the sea shore at Mamaia and Constanta ( Romania). The reason is hight temperature of the sea.
Thanks for the info. We’ll do some research on that!
I have heard about this issue but not too detailed. Didn’t know it was called phytolankton. Anyway, what is the reason behind the decline of the number of phytoplankton? Is there any organizations that help solve this problem?
this is a dangerous sign for eco system there has been further loss of fishes due to recent bp oil spill in the oceans
The most common theories on the reason for the decline point to two things as a causal factor:
As far as I know there is no one group in charge of the oceans. This of course is part of the problem. As a society we’ve only recently stopped going to war over who “owns” which chunk of the ocean. I’m not sure that humans as a species will ever get together and make rules about the oceans health, but let’s hope I’m wrong!
Dude! This is some serious stuff!
I hope someone somewhere is going to do something . . .
If I knew how, I would . . .
Is it possible to grow plankton in my fish tank and then just dump it in the ocean and it will survive and breed?