Phytoplankton In Full Retreat

By John Vlahakis

The smallest and most important plant to the oceanic world is phytoplankton. It is an organism that floats on or near the surface of water. It is the foundation of the ocean food web. The word plankton is derived from the Greek word “planktos” which means drifting. And like the current climate bill, it is drifting into extinction. Scientists have been monitoring phytoplankton for over 100 years. The data stream is that long, and since 1979 they have been monitoring the ebbs and flows of it with remote sensing satellites. Their studies are providing use with the evidence that phytoplankton biomass is fluctuating on a decadal scale, and that those fluctuations are headed in a downward spiral. Phytoplankton appears to be disappearing at a rate of 1% a year for the last century. Since 1950 scientists research show that phytoplankton shrunk by some 40% according to a report just published by the journal Nature. Marine scientists David Siegel from UC Santa Barbara, and Daniel Boyce from Dalhousie University in Canada, jointly authored the report. In the report the scientists noted that the global decline, which was observed in eight of 10 ocean basins, corresponded with a rise in ocean temperatures. The scientists suspect that warming near the surface of the ocean makes each ocean layer more distinct, preventing the bottom layer, which is rich in nutrients, from mixing effectively with the upper layers and thus fertilizing the phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is an important key to the whole oceanic ecosystem. The effect on declining fisheries has yet to be gauged, but in terms of being a harbinger for climate change, it is unquestionable.