Satellite Study Shows Drop In Ocean's Plankton Level

An anonymous reader submits: "CNN reports there seems to be a dramatic drop in N. hemishpere phytoplankton and a net overall decline in the ocean's overall phytoplankton population. This has very serious implications for the overall food chain and also the scrubbing of CO2 in the atmosphere."

Comments

Actually seems like a shift from N to S

[ccmann]

Here's the original press release from NASA. The actual journal article, in Geophysical Research Letters, is not available on the Web to nonsubscribers.

Note, though, an important sentence in the NASA release that is missing from the CNN account:

"Also, summer plankton concentrations rose by over 50 percent in both the Northern Indian and the Equatorial Atlantic Oceans since the mid-80s. Large areas of the Indian Ocean showed substantial increases during all four seasons."

There's still a net loss, but the real phenomenon appears to be a shifting of phytoplankton from north to south.

Re:Or maybe el Nino?

[arkham6]

Unfortunatly this is not a quick change. This is a gradual decline since the 1980's.

This is a very scary thing. I remember my bio teacher in high school saying that the plankton were responsible for the majority of the co2 -> 02 conversions. They also feed fish and whales. If they continue to drop, we may soon have dead lifeless oceans. I'm not trying to sound like a fear monger, but...

UVs

[Scrameustache]

IIRC

Plankton is sensitive to ultraviolet rays (in the "it kills it" sense), with all the talk of ozone layers and holes in the recent years, I wonder if this might be related.

Huh?

[Cyno01]

wern't we having the opposite problem with plankton? all the nitrates and crap from farming flowing down the mississippi into the gulf and causing a surge in plankton that was choking off the eco-system, there were dead fish washing up on every beach in the gulf, was the phytoplankton or am i thinking of something else?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but thats what happens..things fluctuate, soon they will complain of too many fish, then plankton will come back, then fish, etc..it takes a little while for a stable eco-system to form when new things are added..but it will be fine.

you'd better be!

[js7a]

You are correct to be scared. There seems to be little hope.

And how do you know that?

[Spamalamadingdong]

Researchers have been collecting samples of seawater for a lot longer than 20 years. The levels in historical data could have been relatively steady, for all that's in the article.

One thing for certain, if we are going to fight global warming we really can't afford substantial decreases in oceanic carbon fixation. We may have to do things like pumping nutrient-laden deep ocean water up to the surface to overcome the increased adverse thermal gradient and slowing winds (both of which tend to let the water stratify instead of mix).

Re:And how do you know that?

[kroymen]

I know that because they were using specific satellite technology which would not have been available much earlier.

I know that because the article cites a drop *since* *1980*. Had there been a consistent drop since another time period...or even a stable period prior to that time, it should be mentioned in the article.

The point is the only information in the article is that using satellite data, phytoplankton levels have dropped since 1980. From that information, there is only one thing that can be stated with any degree of certainty: that levels of phytoplankton are lower than they were 22 years ago.

As much as the wild-eyed prophets would like to believe otherwise, that's not much to go on...

Global warming

[gengee]

I've always been extremely skeptical of global warming and most all evidence produced to 'prove' its existence.

Why? A simple matter of common sense. You constantly see headlines in the liberal-news media similar to "2001 Average Global Temperature Highest Since 1670" which, of course, begs the question "Who/what was producing all the green house gases in 1670 that caused the Earth's temperature to rise so dramatically?"

The answer is noone/nothing. There was no above average volcanic activity. There was certainly no man-made greenhouse gases. There was extraordinarily little man-made pollution. It was, in fact, a normal cycle in the Earth's temperature. We know that the Earth's temperature goes up and down over the course of hundreds and thousands of years.

Not to mention of course the fact that 30 years ago we were heading into an iceage, and all advised to buy warm clothes. Won't this new global warming simply offset the predicted ice age of 30 years ago?

The fact is these enviro-nuts don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about. There has been good scientific data produced, of course, but the media constantly reports tbe findings of liberal-financed propoganda from neo-hippy enviromental nutsos that will do/say anything to get their point across - that man is bad, and nature is good. It's a typical rage-against-the-machine type attitude.

Anyway, in my ramblings I lost track of my point: If we take the plankton data at face value and accept it as true (Ha-ha) and we further stipulate that global warming is a reality - Maybe 'global warming' is directly attributable to the "dramatic drop" in phytoplankton in the N. Hemisphere. Why does the reverse have to be true? If memory serves, something like 80% of all oxygen is produced from cyanobacteria. I don't have exact figures (I never do:P) but thats a whole fuck-ton of carbom dioxide absorbtion.

Don't get me wrong - pollution is bad. It obviously affects wild life populations (Prince William Sound, anyone:P) It's stinky, it's yucky and I don't want it in my back yard. But this idea that it's going to cause the flooding the world, that it will unleach monster hurricanes upon Oklahoma is rediculous.