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.

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).