Word: phytoplankton
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...fleet of ships and a chain of automatic sensing buoys, plus aerial photography and satellite observation. The system would be used to spot the source of pollutants like oil, mercury and lead. It would also monitor oxygen levels in the seas and "red tides," the abnormal growth of phytoplankton that can choke out other forms of marine life. Obviously, such a system will need the political support of nations that now exploit and degrade the seas...
...Croix, where the Caribbean slopes off very steeply, they are siphoning up nutrient-rich, cold (41° F.) sea water from a depth of half a mile and feeding it into small pools, each with a capacity of 16,000 gallons. Within ten days the pools teem with phytoplankton and become ideal breeding grounds for aquatic life. Last week the Columbia scientists "set" their first batch of young Chesapeake Bay and Long Island oysters in the ponds, where they should thrive on the bountiful food supply. Eventually the scientists hope to raise snails, shrimps and anchovies in the pools...
...north is a simple ecosystem with few distinct species. While a lake in California may contain several hundred species of phytoplankton, an Arctic lake has only a dozen. This lack of diversity, in ecological terms, is tantamount to vulnerability. Any species can be wiped out and no other species will take its place. The result is expressed in a word that many Alaskans have come to hate: fragility. Says Walter Hickel: "It used to be the hostile, frozen north; now it's the goddamn fragile tundra...
Where do most of the pollutants end up? Probably in the oceans, which cover 70% of the globe. Yet even the oceans can absorb only so much filth; many ecologists are worried about the effects on phytoplankton. If the supertanker Torrey Canyon had leaked herbicides rather than oil, the spillage would have wiped out all plankton life in the North Sea. Other ecologists fear that the oceans will become so burdened with noxious wastes that they will lose their vast power...
...larger than a few parts per billion in plankton, says Biologist Charles F. Wurster Jr., chief scientific adviser to a New York conservationist group called the Environmental Defense Fund, can substantially hinder the photosynthesis process. On a larger scale, such interference could have a devastating effect, since phytoplankton produces 70% of the earth's oxygen...