Our Starving Oceans, the Decline in Plankton

Our Starving Oceans:

The Decline in Plankton

Plankton refers to the whole assortment of tiny, often microscopic, living things in the ocean. These organisms are the starting point, or bottom of the marine food web, and the health of the whole system depend on sufficient plankton levels. There are two primary types of plankton that scientists have been concerned with are phytoplankton and zooplankton. Phytoplankton is the fertilizer for the zooplankton supplying them with important nutrients to survive. Many fish and some mammals depend on them for their food source. As a result, animals higher on the food chain are facing mass starvation. Besides the fact of them being the fundamental food link for the ocean phytoplankton also contributes to the global production of oxygen and carbon dioxide absorption.

Researchers have been observing the trends in the plankton for about 70 years. Sir Alister Hardy invented the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey or CPR for short in 1931. Robert Falcon Scott first used the CPR on the British Royal Research Ship on his expeditions to Antarctica (Kreeger, Gamble 32). The device would record the abundance of plankton in a predetermined volume of water. Hardy had determined that if he deployed several of these devises he could trace seasonal and annual changes in abundances. This data was used to provide a unique base line to compare fluctuations in fish abundance and suspected environmental changes. Mike Colebrook, former director of the survey explains:

As the CPR Survey grew over the decades, in terms of the routes it covered and the decades it spanned, the value of the data has totally transcended the original concepts. Today, the survey is tackling phenomena as large as global climate change. (Kreeger, Gamble 33)

There is an extraordinary list of statistics that convey the survey’s history. The CPR has traveled nearly 4,000,000 miles; that’s over 150 times around the world by ships from 10 different countries resulting in over 165,000 samples as of 1992. Some of the routes the CPR has traveled were in the North Sea, North Atlantic, English Channel, and along the North American eastern seaboard. In the North Sea the data on fisheries David Cushing a biologist had discovered the link between the abundance of fish and plankton (zooplankton) a favorite food of juvenile fishes. The data collected over 15 years 1962-1978 had indicated the production of plankton had shifted from April to May. This changed the commercial wealth of important fish such as cod and haddock.

In more recent years technology has given us the capability of viewing the earth’s atmosphere via satellites. Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) aboard NASA's Nimbus-7 Satellite used in late 1979-1986 to measure carbon per year. Also there is NASA’s Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Senor (SeaWiFS) used in 1997-2002. The SeaWiFS measures the amount of light coming out of the ocean at different wavelengths on the spectrum, and can determine the strength of the greenness coming form the tiny plants’ cells (Staff Writers). Researchers have claimed that the plants productivity has been declining