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Satellite Study Shows Drop In Ocean's Plankton Level

Posted by timothy on from the but-who's-counting dept.

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."

1 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Actually seems like a shift from N to S by ccmann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.