Tourists to Antarctica are fueling research on some of the tiniest, most influential organisms on Earth: phytoplankton. These itty bitty critters make their own food and are the base of the food web in most of the ocean, but tracking how well they're doing is historically tricky. So, researchers with the program FjordPhyto are using samples collected by these tourists to understand how the balance of power in the Antarctic food web could be shifting — could ripple across the food web of the entire ocean. Want to hear more community science at work or about polar ecosystems? Let us know by emailing [email protected]! We're also always open to other story ideas you have. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What are phytoplankton and why are they important?
If you had to pick a favorite ocean critter, what would it be? Whale? Dolphin? Penguin? Coral? One of my new favorites after talking with biologist Martina Messioni is phytoplankton.
They're the base of the food web in most of the ocean areas. And like our Earth is like 70% ocean. So everything that happens in the ocean relies on phytoplankton eventually.
Chapter 2: How do phytoplankton contribute to the ocean's ecosystem?
Plankton comes from the Greek word for drifter and refers to anything that can't swim against the current, which makes jellyfish plankton. And the plankton we're talking about today, phytoplankton, can make their own food from sunlight through photosynthesis. Because of this, the whole ocean needs them. And so do humans.
There are some estimations that say like 50% of the oxygen that is on the atmosphere comes from the ocean and specifically from the phytoplankton.
Martina studies phytoplankton that live in Antarctic polar fjords, these narrow ocean inlets that have been carved out by glaciers. Because of the crystal clear water and the abundance of nutrients like nitrates, phosphates, and sulfur, there are a lot of phytoplankton in and near the surface of these waters.
So many that in the summer, there are enough of them to feed the millions of tons of krill that then feed all the whales that migrate to Antarctica. So it's a very, very productive community, and it's also very diverse. There are a lot of kinds of phytoplankton that have adapted to live in these polar fjords in a certain balance with each other.
But new research Martina is doing as part of a community science program called Fjord Phyto suggests that balance may be shifting. Samples collected by Antarctic tour operators and tourists are beginning to pick apart the influence of climate change on the foundation of the ocean's food web.
So today on the show, how regular people are fueling research on some of the tiniest, most influential critters on Earth, and how the shifting balance of power could ripple across the entire ocean. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, so Martina, what do we know about phytoplankton? Or maybe a better question is, what don't we know about them?
So, like, there's so many things that we don't know about phytoplankton. Specifically from Antarctica, like... how phytoplankton will behave with like changes in the environment. Then the diversity, like how diverse is phytoplankton? Like how many species are there? And I feel like year after year, there are more and more species coming through.
And like the more that we get also into the genes of those specific species, the more that we learn that, oh, actually we have no idea what is going on there.
Okay, so we're talking about these fjords, we're talking about these like phytoplankton. Where do they live in the water column?
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Chapter 3: What is the Fjord Phyto Project?
So you're just trying to, like, figure out, like, what the ecosystem even looks like. Yeah. Okay, cool. At least for the Fjord Fido level, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you've got samples from all these passenger ships. What can you learn from those samples?
We gather different kind of samples. So one sample is for microscopy counting, and that's the sample that I or the people at the university where I work analyze. So what we do with that sample is like discriminate like different species and how much of the different species are in the water column. There's another sample that is for malt water. What we do with that sample is analyze how much
of the ocean water comes from the melting glaciers. And then another sample is for genetic analysis. There's also like other people that is going to analyze that sample and like try to look at like the diversity of the phytoplankton, but like in a genetic way.
So there's all different kinds of phytoplankton. And I know that they can bloom like this explosion in population, like maybe a couple times a year. And even some of them are so big, you can see them from space. So can you see like a huge jump in the population in the samples that people like return to you during these blooms?
Chapter 4: How are tourists contributing to Antarctic research?
Yeah. So from the samples that we collected, we have recorded like several different blooms. So a bloom is like when a phytoplankton species or a group species, they're like super happy. They like the temperature, the nutrients, whatever they have. And they can just divide themselves and grow exponentially. But like... In a couple hours or days.
And so you get like millions of cells per liter of water.
Wow.
And so... you can have these huge blooms and you can sometimes see them like from space or like even in the water, you see like, you know, there's what they call like red ties when you see like red coloration in the water. That's phytoplankton blooms.
But sometimes they are like not evident at all unless you count the cells or you look at them under the microscope that you actually identify these blooms. Um, so yeah, we have been looking at the samples and finding a lot of different blooms, uh, in the different years, some years with like more blooms or like diverse blooms and some with less phytoplankton.
Can you talk about what would happen if something happens to these phytoplankton and their numbers start to decline? Like how would that affect other things?
Yeah, it's really hard to say if the phytoplankton is actually going to decline or not. I mean, there are some theories that say they're more likely to switch, like the species are going to be different. But of course, every single thing that happens is going to have an impact on the rest of the ecosystem. In Antarctic especially, so everything kind of relies on krill.
Krill is this little crustacean. It kind of looks like shrimp and it's what We sometimes hear about, like, oh, what whales eat, but mostly everything in Antarctica at some point relies on krill, and krill relies on a specific group of phytoplankton, which are the larger diatoms. So what happens if the diatoms are not there anymore?
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Chapter 5: What challenges do phytoplankton face due to climate change?
They will have to look for other food, and that would have, like, a major impact on... the rest of the ecosystem.
Why do you think like really understanding this ecosystem, really understanding the populations of phytoplankton in Antarctica, why is that so important?
Chapter 6: How does glacier melt affect phytoplankton communities?
Well, I feel like the time is now to understand these places before like they change or they're gone. A lot of things that could be super cool happening and we have no idea. Like, you know, sometimes you see in the news like, oh, they discovered like this very weird protein that has this anticoagulant aspect or something. And they found it in like a fish that was hiding in the world. Yeah.
So probably there's a lot of things happening too that we have no idea. Especially thinking more like Antarctica and like how the organisms are adapted to live that way. So yeah, maybe it's the key for something good hiding there.
I like that thought. It's very optimistic. Martina, thank you so much for talking with me today. No, it was super fun. To learn more about the Fjord Fido project, check out the link in our episode notes. And if you liked this episode, follow us on whatever podcasting platform you're listening from. That way you'll never miss a new episode.
This episode was produced by Burleigh McCoy and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.