Today I want to write about the foundation of the entire food chain in the Salish Sea as well as all the worlds ocean. That’s right, I’m talking about plankton! There are two types of plankton that exist: phytoplankton, tiny plants, and zooplankton, tiny animals. Because phytoplankton are in fact plants, they are going spend a majority of time at the surface of the water in order to have access to their main food source, the sun. These animals are going to photosynthesize in order to feed themselves, and during this process they are going to produce oxygen. Did you know that phytoplankton produce over half of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere?
Zooplankton are a little different because they are animals, so they are not able to photosynthesize. Zooplankton are made up of a hundreds of thousands of different species of animals from crustaceans, fish, jellyfish, barnacles, sea stars, and many others. Probably the best known zooplankton would be krill and that is because many larger baleen whales feed heavily on them. It is amazing that some of the largest animals in the world feed on some of the smallest. The zooplankton however are going to be feeding on another small creature, the phytoplankton.
Both types of plankton are also big indicators of ocean health. For example, if there is a farm using a large amount of pesticide, when it rains then those chemicals will run off into the rivers nearby which will eventually lead to the ocean. Once those chemicals hit the ocean that could create a die off in plankton in that particular area, which would then create a collapse of the food chain in that particular range. When you come to the Salish Sea you will notice that our waters tend to be a dark green/ blue coloration. That is because our waters are full of those living plankton residing in dense groups which cause the water to lose visibility. Learning about small organisms like plankton makes people realize how much life exists around us, sometimes they just come in small packages.
Naturalist Rachel