![]() ![]() "It's a tiny fraction, a fraction of a percent of biomass that makes it deeper down in the ocean where the water stays away from the atmosphere for a long time, from decades to thousands of years," Heidi Sosik, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a member of the EXPORTS team, said in the statement. The EXPORTS team is working to better understand this twilight-zone carbon, and how it may be contributing, ultimately, to Earth's climate. But some of this organic carbon, coming from feces or decomposed bodies, sinks down to the twilight zone. Some of the organic carbon that travels from the phytoplankton to the zooplankton to larger animals re-enters the atmosphere through respiration - zooplankton, like all animals, breathe out carbon dioxide - and when those animals die and decompose, according to the statement. So, the organic carbon that the phytoplankton take in is then "transferred," so to speak, to the larger zooplankton, which are then often eaten by larger animals. These creatures make a mass migration to the surface and return to the twilight zone at sunrise, according to the statement. ![]() Some species of zooplankton - which, depending on the species, can be microscopic like phytoplankton or large enough to be seen with the naked eye - live in this twilight zone but rise to the surface to feed on phytoplankton. This dim region is home to a wide variety of species, including zooplankton. This "unseen world," known as the twilight zone, lies 650 feet to 3,300 feet (200 meters to 1,000 meters) below the ocean's surface, where there is little to no light. "The continued exploration of the ocean, its ecosystems and their controls on the carbon cycle as observed with advanced technologies by EXPORTS will provide unprecedented views of Earth's unseen world," Paula Bontempi, an EXPORTS program scientist at NASA Headquarters, in Washington, D.C., said in the statement. Phytoplankton influence Earth's climate, and researchers are working to figure out exactly how. Phytoplankton blooms are seen in this image taken by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. This campaign is called Export Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing (EXPORTS), and it will employ underwater robot tools, satellite imagery and two research vessels: Sally Ride and Roger Revelle (R/V). But, while scientists understand how these creatures capture carbon, they do not know where the carbon eventually ends up (and how long it stays there) when the phytoplankton get eaten by animals like zooplankton or die.įunded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, a multidisciplinary oceanographic campaign made up of over 100 scientists is working to better understand how creatures like phytoplankton impact Earth's climate, according to a statement. Mostly single-celled creatures, the phytoplankton play a supporting role in Earth's climate by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. It is in this region that we start to see bioluminescent fish and all sorts of bizarre looking fish.Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that reside near the ocean's surface, where they soak up the sunshine. Larger fish like, whales and giant squid dive to these depths to feed. The light that reaches this zone is pretty faint. This zone extends from 700 feet down to about 3,280 feet. Photoplankton is responsible for almost half of the earth’s oxygen released in the atmosphere. Most marine animals live in this zone and feed off of photoplankton (the basis of the ocean food chain) and smaller fish. This is where the wide range of temperatures occur. This is where most of the visible light is and with light comes heat. This zone extends from the surface down to about 700 feet. The sunlight zone, the twilight zone, the midnight zone, the abyss and the trenches. ![]() The ocean water column is made up of 5 zones. In this blog, we will explore the layers of the ocean and what types of marine life resides in those layers. It is because of these elements that certain sections of the ocean only contain certain marine animals. In fact, sections of the water column in the ocean are differentiated by pressure, light, temperature, oxygen and mineral nutrients. Since the ocean is on average 3 miles deep, it may not surprise you that the water column is not uniform. In a previous blog, we talked about the depth of the ocean. ![]()
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