Phytoplinkton, key to Ocean Life, 2% fall per year in North Atlantic
A new study has found that two main types of biomass have decreased by two percent in biomass in North Atlantic for the last 60 years.
Researchers at the University of Dalhousie analyzed data collected for more than half a century as of how two types of phytoplankton – dytams and dinoflaglates – are responding to climate change.
The analysis found that while the makeup and distribution of phytoplinkon differed in different parts of the North Atlantic, overall, except for the eastern and western continental shelves, there was a decrease in the duration from 1960 to 2017.
“Change is a concern,” Andrew Irwin, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Statistics. One of the authors of the study Published in Plos One this month, a colleague was reviewed, open-access Journal.
“This is an important part of our ecosystem that any change, especially a change that we do not fully understand, is a matter of concern.”
Phytoplankton are small but powerful.
Micro organisms are the root of the ocean food web, which feeds large organisms such as zoplacatan, which is later consumed by fish, which move to feed mammals and birds.
They play an important role in the carbon cycle of the planet, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and drown it to the floor of the sea when they die – which helps reduce the effects of climate change.
Irwin says that evidence pointed to climate change as the cause of a decrease in phytoplinkon.
“This is not an experiment. We are looking at things. So I cannot definitely say this,” they say. “But our models suggest that our changes in the atmosphere, changes in the temperature of the Earth, are leading to this decline in biomass.”
Continuous plankton recorder
Data for new studies conducted with colleagues in Dalhousie’s Mathematics and Oceanography Departments came from an attractive project that began in 1931 and continued almost unchanged for decades.
The continuous plankton recorder is a sample that is toes by vessels in oceans around the world. There is a roll of silk inside the torpedo-shaped cover that slowly opens, capture phytoplinkon as the ship moves through water. The roll is preserved for the ship’s travel duration and then sent to laboratories for analysis.
CPR has so far sampled more than seven million knots.
Douglas Campbell, Canada Research Chairman at Phytoplinkton Ecofiziology at Mount Elisan University, called CPR “attractive old school approach”.
“It is like steampank technology,” Campbell says, who is a professor of biology in Mount Elisen and who were not involved in the study. “But because it goes back till now, it is in this unique window whether things were long and certainly through a significant period of change.”
Study the expectations of the study
Irwin says that a limit to the study is that CPR silk is not able to grab small phytoplinkon.
He says, “Small phytoplinkon that does not count can do something different.” “We don’t know.”
Campbell says that there is evidence in other researches that some small phytoplankans are becoming more abundant and effective, which he says that can be a concern in the long term, as they are not high quality food sources and do not dent even older people with carbon.
Irwin says that based on previous studies, he and his colleagues expected a change towards dinoflaglates at the expense of the diet. Dinoflaglates have low nutritional concentrations and do not efficiently remove the carbon as a diet.
However, data showed that the dietal biomass was actually developed in proportion to the dinoflaglet biomass everywhere except the Arctic region of the North Atlantic.
“The message is that the ocean is complex,” Irwin says. “This is not just a temperature, it is not just a factor that is going to tell us what is going to happen.”
