{"id":88730,"date":"2023-08-02T18:44:20","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T18:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/"},"modified":"2023-08-02T18:44:20","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T18:44:20","slug":"this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/","title":{"rendered":"This Heat Is Shaking the Very Foundation of the Ocean Food Web"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Secondly, the warmer water gets, the less dense it becomes. At the surface, you end up with a band of hot water, with cooler waters in the depths, a layering known as stratification. \u201cIf you\u2019ve ever gone swimming in a lake in the summer, if you\u2019re at the surface, it\u2019s nice and warm, and then you dive down and it gets cold pretty fast,\u201d says Michael Behrenfeld, an ocean ecologist at Oregon State University. \u201cThat\u2019s the stratification layer that you\u2019re going through.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">In the ocean, this warm water acts like a cap that interrupts critical ecological processes. Normally, nutrients well up from the depths, providing food for the phytoplankton floating at the surface. Stratification prevents that. In addition, winds typically blow across the surface and mix that water down deeper, also bringing up nutrients. But with stratification, the contrast between the surface layer of warm water and the underlying cold water is so strong that it\u2019s very difficult for wind energy to mix the two.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Together, all of these mean that phytoplankton in a warmer ocean are deprived of the nutrients they need. In response, they produce fewer of the pigments they use to turn sunlight into energy. \u201cPhytoplankton will decrease their photosynthetic pigments because they\u2019re becoming more nutrient-stressed,\u201d says Behrenfeld. \u201cThey don\u2019t need to harvest as much light because they don\u2019t have enough nutrients to do as much photosynthesis as they did before.\u201d (Behrenfeld can actually see transformation in satellite imagery.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">They also reduce their pigment production because of their increased exposure to light. Without the wind mixing the water, they\u2019re stuck in that cap of hot water at the surface for longer. With access to more light, they need less pigment in order to do the same amount of photosynthesis.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cThe nutrient stress part is what we\u2019re really worried about,\u201d says Behrenfeld. \u201cIf it\u2019s more stressed, there\u2019s less photosynthesis, which means less production of organic material for the food chain, which feeds fish.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The warming of the world\u2019s waters is creating winners and losers in the phytoplankton community. As temperatures go up, smaller species of phytoplankton tend to proliferate, which feed smaller species of zooplankton, which start to dominate the ecosystem. The larger species of zooplankton then have to spend more energy to gather enough of the tiniest phytoplankton to fill up. (Imagine surviving on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and then having to switch to sliders.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cIn a lot of cases, plankton can be quite resilient, but you get changes in the community composition,\u201d says Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The species that can best adapt to the warmer waters and changes in the food supply have an advantage. The zooplanktonic copepod species <em>Calanus finmarchicus<\/em>, for instance, typically lives at subarctic latitudes. \u201cBut it\u2019s penetrating farther and farther north,\u201d says Meyer-Kaiser, \u201cand becoming more and more common, and coming to dominate the community up there as you have temperatures rising and warm water influx.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Secondly, the warmer water gets, the less dense it becomes. At the surface, you end up with a band of hot water, with cooler waters in the depths, a layering known as stratification. \u201cIf you\u2019ve ever gone swimming in a lake in the summer, if you\u2019re at the surface, it\u2019s nice and warm, and then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>This Heat Is Shaking the Very Foundation of the Ocean Food Web - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Heat Is Shaking the Very Foundation of the Ocean Food Web - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Secondly, the warmer water gets, the less dense it becomes. At the surface, you end up with a band of hot water, with cooler waters in the depths, a layering known as stratification. \u201cIf you\u2019ve ever gone swimming in a lake in the summer, if you\u2019re at the surface, it\u2019s nice and warm, and then [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-08-02T18:44:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ghana News\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ghana News\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/\",\"name\":\"This Heat Is Shaking the Very Foundation of the Ocean Food Web - Ghanamma.com\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2023-08-02T18:44:20+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-08-02T18:44:20+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/#\/schema\/person\/6f91dab2e50bbbfe895c93e7e84e7f74\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"This Heat Is Shaking the Very Foundation of the Ocean Food Web\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/\",\"name\":\"Ghanamma.com\",\"description\":\"Ghana mma provides breaking news, top stories in Ghana, Africa, business, entertainment, politics and more.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/#\/schema\/person\/6f91dab2e50bbbfe895c93e7e84e7f74\",\"name\":\"Ghana News\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/22cb97c2b08df229330efb2b8c2645feaae8d3ca3ee434035fbb668b5b82f570?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/22cb97c2b08df229330efb2b8c2645feaae8d3ca3ee434035fbb668b5b82f570?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Ghana News\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/author\/ghanamma\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"This Heat Is Shaking the Very Foundation of the Ocean Food Web - Ghanamma.com","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/02\/this-heat-is-shaking-the-very-foundation-of-the-ocean-food-web\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"This Heat Is Shaking the Very Foundation of the Ocean Food Web - Ghanamma.com","og_description":"Secondly, the warmer water gets, the less dense it becomes. 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