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Continued warming of UK waters is likely to cause major changes to plankton, the tiny drifting plants and animals that form the foundation of marine food webs, scientists have warned.
Plankton are the foundation of all marine life, feeding fish and storing carbonClimate change is damaging populations of tiny drifting plants and animals that feed the fish humans eat, according to marine scientists.
Wildlife habitats in the open seas support these organisms – known as plankton – which form the foundation of marine ecosystems in UK waters, underpinning fisheries, food webs, biodiversity, and climate regulation.
A new report by the the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) has revealed that warming seas are driving major changes in plankton communities around the UK and Northeast Atlantic.
Plankton are sensitive to environmental change, making them useful early warning indicators of climate impacts.
Plankton are the foundation of marine ecosystems, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and providing the food that sustains fish, seabirds and marine mammals. For example, smaller plankton and microbial species are increasingly replacing larger, more nutritious plankton, changing the rate at whi
ch energy moves through marine food webs. This may increase the risk of mismatches between plankton availability and fish spawning, they said.The annual spring plankton bloom will
begin earlier and last longer in some areas as sea temperatures rise. As plankton species’ popula
tions shift further north as habitat conditions change, fish and other marine wildlife will follow, the scie
ntists say.Warmer seas will become more ‘layered’, making it harder for
Original Record.
This archived record authored by ‘Catherine Early’ at ‘METEORED (Your Weather)’ was recovered from data set:
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