Phytoplankton Declines Of Up To 20% In Indian Ocean; "Ecological Desert" Status Beckons

[hatrack]

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"Rapid warming in the Indian Ocean is playing an important role in reducing phytoplankton up to 20 percent," said Roxy Mathew Koll, a scientist at the Centre for Climate Change Research at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune.

Over six decades, rising water temperatures appear to have been reducing the amount of phytoplankton – microscopic plants at the base of the ocean food chain – available as food for fish, according to research released in December by Koll and other scientists from the United States, South Africa and France.

That “may cascade through the food chain, potentially turning this biologically productive region into an ecological desert,” Koll said. Such a change would curb food security not only in Indian Ocean rim countries but also global fish markets that buy from the region, he said.

As waters in parts of the Indian Ocean have warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius over the last century, the mixing of surface water and nutrient-rich deeper waters have slowed, the scientists said. That has prevented nutrients from reaching the plankton, which are mostly active in surface waters. “The vertical mixing (of water) is a critical process for introducing nutrients into the upper zones where sufficient light is available for photosynthesis,” said Raghu Murtugudde, a scientist from the University of Maryland.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/sri-lanka-fishing-climatechange-idUSKCN0UX0IQ

[virtualobserver]

1. since 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants....

how much phytoplankton can we afford to lose?