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
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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.
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?
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