Phytoplankton: The Forgotten Heroes Of The Climate Fight

What We Can't Sea

• Bookmark
• Add to queue

Phytoplankton is the building blocks of the marine food web, play vital role in regulating our climate. But they're in trouble. This episode tells their story and urges us to take action to protect them.

"As ocean is becoming hotter and more acidic. While this does not mean the ocean is becoming a pool of acid which will burn you more than the sun when you’re at the beach, it does mean danger for the billions of sea creatures that call the ocean home. In this situation, Phytoplankton play an important role in the global water cycle. Like trees are the lungs of the land, phytoplankton are the lungs of the ocean, producing about half of the world’s oxygen. While trees have full leaf canopies to collect carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into oxygen, phytoplankton are microscopic and rely on sheer numbers to help transport 9 trillion kilograms of carbon (equivalent to the weight of over 5 million blue whales) from the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean. All 25,000 species of phytoplankton worldwide work together to photosynthesize and create food that is the basis for almost all marine food webs."