Top of the Food Chain
Today comes the startling news of a British government report showing a drop in oceanic zooplankton of 73 percent since 1960.
For many people, this may seem relatively inconsequential as compared to daily cataclysmic revelations about the state of the national and global economy. This reaction is understandable: we care first and foremost about our own immediate survival prospects, and a new and greater Depression will mean millions losing their homes, millions more their jobs. It's nothing to look forward to.
It takes some scientific literacy to appreciate the implications of the catastrophic loss of microscopic sea animals. We need to understand that these are food for crustaceans and fish, which are food for sea birds and mammals. We need to appreciate the importance of the oceanic food web in the planetary biosphere.
At the top of the global food chain sits a species that we really do care about—Homo sapiens. The ongoing disappearance of zooplankton, amphibians, butterflies, and bees is tied directly or indirectly to the continuing growth of our own species—both in population (there are nearly seven billion of us large-bodied omnivores, more than any other mammal) and in consumptive voracity (water, food, minerals, energy, forests—you name it).
It's at this point in the discussion that some of us start feeling guilty for being human, and others of us tune the conversation out because there's apparently not much we can do to fundamentally change the demographic and economic growth trends our species has been pursuing for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
But the current economic Armageddon (that we care about) is related to human-induced biodiversity loss (that many of us don't notice) in systemic ways. Both result from pyramid schemes: borrowing and leveraging money on one hand; on the other, using temporary fossil energy to capture ever more biosphere services so as to grow human population and consumption to unsustainable levels. Our economic pyramid is built out of great hewn blocks of renewable and non-renewable resources that are being made unavailable to other organisms as well as to future generations of humans.
The financial meltdown tells us these trends can't go on forever. How the mighty have fallen!—Masters of the Universe reduced to begging for billion-dollar handouts in front of a television audience.
Next will come a human demographic collapse (resulting from the economic crisis, with poor folks unable to afford food or shelter), as mortality begins to exceed fertility.
In all of this it's important to remember that the species on the lower levels of the biodiversity pyramid have been paying the price for our exuberance all along.
The pyramid appears to collapse from the top, while in fact its base has been crumbling for some time.
Well there goes my plan for survival by draging a plankton net behind my kayak...
So this begs the question is this a massive dieoff accross the board of all forms of zooplankton or is there a selection going on with some forms blooming and others dieing? I almost don't want to read the report to find out. That's very frightening news indeed!
A drop in zooplankton will reduce fish stocks...
But it wont hurt the hamburger industry...cows are fed off grass, and corn.
Wheat only needs a less than Tundric climate to give us bread.
It means less Omega 3's and O-6 fatty acids in our diets, unless you stock up on chia and/or SEABUCKTHORN oils.
Human population is NOT directly causing this. We could ADD people to the planet and live more a more ORGANIC lifestyle....and have more zooplankton and biodiversity to boot.
Instead the plan is to poison the waters, the baby food, you name it...Honey bees are Dying because Bayer Nicotine based insecticides are killing them.
GM foods been linked to sterility and early death ( Roundup ready means 4X the instecide ! In addition the insecticide injected into the plants DNA.
Don't fall into the hands of those who wish to use you as slaves.
Besides the marine food chain, plankton produce part of the planet's oxygen. I have seen estimates of 50%. This is possibly the most serious issue facing humans today
http://www.marine-phytoplankton-works.com/marine-phytoplankton.htm
Why Marine Phytoplankton: NATURE'S PERFECT TOTAL FOOD
Marine Phytoplankton are known as the ocean's fundamental food web. Marine phytoplankton consists of an immense variety of single cell plants found in the surface upper zone of the aquatic system. Phytoplankton have ability to transform inorganic minerals and sea water, natural warmth, and the Earth's sunlight and carbon dioxide into usable vitamins, proteins, amino acids, and carbohydrates, in essence creating food for the global ecosystem. Marine phytoplankton are responsible for creating the majority of our planet's oxygen. Marine phytoplankton "Grasses of the Sea" nourish the cells completely. Because of photosynthesis our diverse marine biology ocean plants take in both the sea and the sun and produce nutrients.
Richard,
Good article. We all need to be made more fully aware of how connected we all are.
Thanks.
Jed
Just linked to your article... it seemed to fit well with the posting about the five stages of collapse (see link). Environmental collapse must be the sixth stage - the biggest and most fundamental of them all!
Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation found in samples out in the Pacific Gyre that there was six times as much plastic debris in the seawater than zooplankton.
Good of Richard Heinberg to call to our attention that zooplankton is down by 70% which is shocking.
Now we know that besides the plastic plague, some other man-made effect is responsible for the more dense showing of plastic: possibly climate change killing krill.
There are a lot of practices people have to stop now.
Jan Lundberg
Richard,
If populations of things (species in the food chain) are proportionatley related, it seems that there must be a great deal of substitution of food sources working its way up the chain, otherwise it just doesn't seem conceivable that we're still here with that percentage of decrease in the zooplankton.
Do you know what some of those substitutions might be and how they are affecting life and the environment?
The disintegration of the natural food chain in the form of declining zooplankton, diminishing fish stocks, and the shrinking of other aquatic and terrestrial species populations is a clear warning signal that the top of the food chain, humans, are treading on very thin ice. It is not a question of if but when human populations enter a prolonged decline. All things considered, that time is clearly close at hand. The combination of collapsing natural ecosystems, peaking of basic energy resources, financial turmoil, geopolitical tensions, etc. will undercut the ability of humans to sustain large populations. Technology cannot pull us out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. The only real issue is whether or not the transition from the current 6+ billion people to a population of perhaps 2 billion will be a disaster or a catastrophe.
This 'startling news' comes from a graph on page 9 of a promotional brochure released this summer by the UK's Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)(see http://www.defra.gov.uk/marine/pdf/mpp08-09.pdf).
It's intended to be a good news report. It shows that fish stocks are rebounding and that heavy metal loads are falling in fish. It also shows a steady decline in zooplankton abundance. One possible reason for this decline is that fish eat zooplankton: As fish populations recover zooplankton populations fall.
The graph is presented without much context, explanation, or even a source for the data. One piece of the graph -- the zooplankton line -- was picked up by a charity called Buglife (www.buglife.org.uk), which presented it to the BBC as a "biodiversity disaster of enormous proportions."
There are plenty of other "biodiversity disasters" occurring. This isn't one of them.
Some context can be found in a review paper, prepared by DEFRA scientists, called "Long Term Changes in the North Sea Ecosystem" (see http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/Project_Data/DocumentLibrary/ME3105/ME31...):
Given the background of a general decline in fish stocks and an increase in zooplankton over the 20th century, one can understand why an increase in fish stocks and a decrease in zooplankton since the 1970s is presented as progress. Indeed, the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery has been associated with rising zooplankton numbers (see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070222155140.htm).
Kathy,
we are talking about ZOOplankton, not PHYTO (plant) plankton.
Michael,
Thank you for going to the source, which gives a better perspective.
This may, or may not even be an issue. :)
Good of Richard Heinberg to call to our attention that zooplankton is down by 70% which is shocking.
Now we know that besides the plastic plague, some other man-made effect is responsible for the more dense showing of plastic: possibly climate change killing krill.
There are a lot of practices people have to stop now.
keyeagle
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