WOODS HOLE, Mass. — November 25, 2013 — A marine ecosystem expert is warning that the effect of changes in water temperature and plankton blooms may have ripple effects up the food chain.
"We believe that the changes in the timing of warming events have affected plant and animal reproduction," wrote oceanographer Kevin Friedland of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole in an ecosystem advisory released last week.
Friedland's research shows that, for the first six months of 2013, ocean temperatures from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian border — the area known as the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem — did not reach the record highs of 2012, which had the highest ocean water temperatures recorded in 150 years. But it was still pretty warm in the Northeast, with sea temperatures the third-warmest on record.
But the Northeast shelf saw an even more ominous record this year, with scientists observing the lowest-ever spring plankton bloom. Phytoplankton is the base of the food chain. It converts the sun's energy and the nutrients stirred up by ocean storms and currents over the winter into a rich bloom of microscopic plant life as the days lengthen in the spring. The phytoplankton are eaten, in turn, by microscopic animals known as zooplankton that are food for everything from fish larvae to whales.