Phytoplankton Bloom Image found on the website: halfblog.net
I recently finished reading Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean by Julia Whitty (2010). It is a beautiful poetic account of her experiences while studying the ocean and its amazing inhabitants.
From the back cover of the book:
"At the center of Deep Blue Home is Julia Whitty's penetrating exploration of the World Ocean as a single body of water connected by a vast and powerful three-dimensional current circling the globe. This undivided body of water profoundly controls and is connected by Earth's climate: Its fate determines our own."
Julia's writing lead me to look for images of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are microscopic plant-like organisms that play several significant roles in the health of the planet systems we all inextricably depend on. They absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. They circulate the underwater rivers of the World Ocean through their swimming movement. This movement circulates the varying temperatures and salinity of the ocean, making the planet habitable for humans and all life. Plankton are also responsible in a large way for the formation of clouds in the atmosphere which bring rain. Phytoplankton form the foundation of the food web in the ocean and on land; a food web we depend on.
Phytoplankton are one of the most important linkages in the biosystems of the planet. The increase of carbon dioxide in the World Ocean is increasing the acidity of the oceans, thus causing a softening of the shells and skeletons of plankton and coral reefs. Coral reefs are the seas' most biodiverse ecosystems. One in six people depend on the coral reefs' abundance for food. According to the research recounted in Deep Blue Home, the acidity caused by the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions "will condemn coral reefs to extinction within fifty years."
We are all connected to the health of the World Ocean no matter where we live.
From the back cover of the book:
"At the center of Deep Blue Home is Julia Whitty's penetrating exploration of the World Ocean as a single body of water connected by a vast and powerful three-dimensional current circling the globe. This undivided body of water profoundly controls and is connected by Earth's climate: Its fate determines our own."
Julia's writing lead me to look for images of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are microscopic plant-like organisms that play several significant roles in the health of the planet systems we all inextricably depend on. They absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. They circulate the underwater rivers of the World Ocean through their swimming movement. This movement circulates the varying temperatures and salinity of the ocean, making the planet habitable for humans and all life. Plankton are also responsible in a large way for the formation of clouds in the atmosphere which bring rain. Phytoplankton form the foundation of the food web in the ocean and on land; a food web we depend on.
Phytoplankton are one of the most important linkages in the biosystems of the planet. The increase of carbon dioxide in the World Ocean is increasing the acidity of the oceans, thus causing a softening of the shells and skeletons of plankton and coral reefs. Coral reefs are the seas' most biodiverse ecosystems. One in six people depend on the coral reefs' abundance for food. According to the research recounted in Deep Blue Home, the acidity caused by the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions "will condemn coral reefs to extinction within fifty years."
We are all connected to the health of the World Ocean no matter where we live.
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