And I thought algal blooms were a growing problem. News from a report in Nature today is that since the late 19th century, and mostly since about 1950, the phytoplankton of the open sea including algae have dropped by nearly half. So much for worries that jellyfish will take over the oceans – they won’t have anything to eat either.

This is a serious development, one fears. We should hope that discovery of a systematic error in long term record keeping or their analysis by researchers at Canada’s Dalhousie University will lead to less drastic conclusion. Or, perhaps, we’ll be persuaded that it’s not the rising heat content of the ocean that the report fingers as most likely suspect, but something else more easily curable (pollution by ships? Fishing sonars? Styrofoam pellets? Help me think of something plausible). Or, at last resort in this age of eco-guilt, maybe it’s not our fault at all?

Stories:

• AP – Seth Borenstein: Plankton, base of ocean food web, in big decline ;
• AFP – Marlowe Hood: Declining algae threatens ocean food chain ;
• ClimateWire (via Sci American) Lauren Morello: Phytoplankton Population Drops 40 Percent Since 1950 / Researchers find trouble among phytoplankton, the base of the food chain, which has implications for hte marine food web and the world’s carbon cycle ;
• Wall St. Journal – Gautam Naik: Vital Marine Plants in Steep Decline ; He ties the plankton news with another Nature report on general biodiversity shifts in the oceans.
• BBC – Richard Black : Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm;
• NPR – Richard Harris: The Food Chain’s Weak Link: Tiny Ocean Plants Dying ; His first sentence: “Microscopic plants in teh ocean, called phytoplankton, are among the most important creatures on Earth…”;
• Voice of America – Jessica Berman: Scientists Report Steep Decline i Algae Critical to Marine Food Chain ;
• Toronto Globe and Mail – Caroline Alphonso: Plants at base of ocean food chain in decline, study finds ;
• Spiegel – Markus Becker: A Food Chain Crisis in the World’s Oceans ; Seems overstated hed. Hope it’s never vindicated.
• Guardian (UK) Juliette Jowit: Scientists warn of global warming threat to marine food chain ;
• Nature.com- Quirin Schiermeier: Ocean greener under warming stress / A century of phytoplankton decline suggests that ocean ecosystems are in peril ;
• AAAS ScienceNow: Kristen Minogue: Critical Ocean Organisms Are Disappearing ;
• Christian Science Monitor (blog) Pete Spotts: Vital ocean phytoplankton a casualty of global warming? ;
• Discovery News – Emily Sohn: Ocean’s Most Abundant Food Source Disappearing ;  Fine tag line. A source tells her everybody loves a blue ocean, but “a blue ocean is full of nothing.”
• New Scientist (blog) Michael Marshall: Phytoplankton in decline: bye bye food chain? ; Partly a roundup of media reports.

Stray question – I read recently that oceanic algae produce about 40 percent of the oxygen entering the atmosphere. It would be worth asking the scientist whether they have checked other potential proxy measures of algal activity, such as the air.

Grist for the Mill: Dalhousie University Press Release ;

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