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The pelagic food web, showing the central involvement of marine microorganisms in how the ocean imports nutrients from and then exports them back to the atmosphere and ocean floor. A marine food web is a food web of marine life. At the base of the ocean food web are single-celled algae and other plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton.
Globally the ocean and the land each produce about the same amount of primary production, but in the ocean primary production comes mainly from cyanobacteria and algae, while on land it comes mainly from vascular plants. Marine algae includes the largely invisible and often unicellular microalgae, which together with cyanobacteria form the ...
While the pelagic food web is based upon phytoplankton production, most of this production is diverted to the benthos via predation by the introduced Amur River clam (Corbula amurensis). Levels of phytoplankton biomass declined by an order of magnitude after the widespread introduction of C. amurensis in the mid-1980s, and have not rebounded.
Plankton contributes approximately half of the global primary production, supports marine food webs, influences the biogeochemical process in the ocean, and strongly affects commercial fisheries. [148] [149] [150] Indeed, an overall decrease in marine plankton productivity is expected over global scales.
The microbial food web refers to the combined trophic interactions among microbes in aquatic environments. These microbes include viruses, bacteria, algae, heterotrophic protists (such as ciliates and flagellates). [1] In aquatic ecosystems, microbial food webs are essential because they form the basis for the cycling of nutrients and energy.
Algae grown in floating farms could be harvested and used for food or fuel. All biological life is made up of lipids, carbohydrates, amino acids, and nucleic acids. Whole algae could be turned into animal feed, fertilizer, or bio-char. Separating the lipids from the algae could also create bio-diesel from the lipid content and bio-char from the ...
The San Pedro-based Marine Mammal Care Center is in need of donations and volunteers as it combats an algae bloom that has killed or sickened more than 1,000 creatures.
The tiny (0.6 μm) marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, discovered in 1986, forms today an important part of the base of the ocean food chain and accounts for much of the photosynthesis of the open ocean [140] and an estimated 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. [141]