Pod Insights Short Wave The Great Antarctic Food Web Puzzle About this episode Tourists to Antarctica are fueling research on some of the tiniest, most influential organisms on Earth: phytoplankton. These itty bitty critters make their own food and are the base of the food web in most of the ocean, but tracking how well they're doing is historically tricky. So, researchers with the program FjordPhyto https://fjordphyto.ucsd.edu/ are using samples collected by these tourists to understand how the balance of power in the Antarctic food web could be shifting https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1139293/full — could ripple across the food web of the entire ocean.
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0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.
0:18 Regina Barber? You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.
0:23 Regina Barber? If you had to pick a favorite ocean critter, what would it be? Whale, dolphin, penguin, coral? One of my new favorites after talking with biologist Martina Messione is phytoplankton.
0:36 Speaker 02 They're the base of the food web in most of the ocean areas. And like, our Earth is like 70% ocean. So everything that happens in the ocean relies on phytoplankton eventually.
0:52 Regina Barber? Plankton comes from the Greek word for drifter and refers to anything that can't swim against the current, which makes jellyfish plankton. And the plankton we're talking about today, phytoplankton, can make their own food from sunlight through photosynthesis. Because of this, the whole ocean needs them, and so do humans.
1:11 Speaker 02 There are some estimations that say like 50% of the oxygen that is on the atmosphere is come from the ocean and specifically from the phytoplankton.
1:24 Regina Barber? Martina studies phytoplankton that live in Antarctic polar fjords, these narrow ocean inlets that have been carved out by glaciers. Because of the crystal clear water and the abundance of nutrients like nitrates, phosphates, and sulfur, there are a lot of phytoplankton in and near the surface of these waters. So many that in the summer, there are enough of them to feed them millions of tons of krill that then feed all the whales that migrate to Antarctica.
1:50 Speaker 02 So it's very, very productive community, and it's also very diverse.
1:56 Regina Barber? There are a lot of kinds of phytoplankton that have adapted to live in these polar fjords in a certain balance with each other. But new research Martina is doing as part of a community science program called Fjord Phido suggests that balance may be shifting. Samples collected by Antarctic tour operators and tourists are beginning to pick apart the influence of climate change on the foundation of the ocean's food web. So today on the show, how regular people are fueling research on some of the tiniest, most influential critters on Earth, and how the shifting balance of power could ripple across the entire ocean. I'm Regina Barber and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.
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4:03 Regina Barber? OK, so Martina, what do we know about phytoplankton? Or maybe a better question is, what don't we know about them?
4:11 Speaker 02 So like, there are so many things that we don't know about phytoplankton. Specifically for Antarctica, like how phytoplankton will behave with like changes in the environment. Then the diversity, like how diverse is phytoplankton? Like, how many species are there? And I feel like year after year, there are more and more species coming through. Um, and like the more that we get also into the genes uh of those specifics species, the more that we learn that, oh, actually, we have no idea what is going on there.
4:46 Regina Barber? Okay, so we're talking about these fjords. We're talking about these like phytoplankton. Where do they live in the water column?
4:53 Speaker 02 So phytoplankton, they depend on the sunlight to photosynthesize. You can find phytoplankton sixty meters below the water uh level, but the highest concentration of phytoplankton is always going to be like in the first few meters.
5:12 Regina Barber? Okay, so they're in these fjords, they're uh they're surrounded by these glaciers that are melting into the ocean. What do we know about that process?
5:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, we know how the glaciers are retreating. So like some studies that say like eighty percent, eighty-seven percent of the glaciers that are in the entire peninsula are retreating. That means they are melting faster um or they are not like growing or stable. But how much actual meltwater it is in the ocean and how the uh meltwater is affecting the communities is why we're trying to understand better.
5:49 Regina Barber? So a huge way that you've learned about phytoplankton in these waters is the fjord phyto project. It's a massive community science project where like regular people on like tour ships are collecting samples that you and other scientists can then like analyze in the lab. So how do passengers physically collect these samples?
6:08 Speaker 02 So we collaborate with different tour vessel that go down to Antarctica from like November till March, so like uh southern summer months. So what we do is train those tour guys that are gonna be with different passengers to run the program when they're on board.
6:30 Regina Barber? Oh, wow.
6:31 Speaker 02 And so what happens is like when they're down in the peninsula, they have like a list of sites that they can go sample. So when they're like, oh, tomorrow we're going to one of these sites and we wanna do fjord. Fido, and so they have like a GPS location they can go. So they go down in like an inflatable boat with the kit for the sampling, like the instruments and the bottles and everything. A group of guests that are interested in helping gather the samples. And so they kind of like have a list of samples and data that they have to gather when they are there.
7:11 Regina Barber? So you rely on these passenger vessels to collect water samples from like dozens of locations and and sometimes you get to go, like, what is that like?
7:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, I feel like it's very meaningful because like the passengers, sometimes they didn't expect at all like to go to Antarctica to do some science. And so when they're doing that, they're like super excited, like they didn't even even think about that when they were like, you know, booking a vacation. And then most of that people have never hear, like even the word phytoplankton before. Uh, so when you talk about like how whales depend on them or like penguins, which is actually what they wanted to see in Antarctica whales and penguins. So when you talk about like, whoa, the whales and penguins wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the phytoplankton.
8:04 Speaker 02 I feel like that kind of blows their mind a little bit. And I think it adds a lot of value to their trip.
8:12 Regina Barber? Okay, so why passenger ships? Like, how does that help with the phytoplankton research?
8:17 Speaker 02 So first of all, we kind of like start like describing what happened in these places that the ships actually go. We have no idea what happened there. Like there was sometimes no description for the phytoplankton before. And we're also understanding better what happens through the whole season. So from November to March, it is a lot of information. When you go with a research vessel, sometimes you go like a month or like two weeks or like very short periods of time. So you have sometimes one month of information from one year and then the next year they couldn't go on the same months. So you have another month. And so then you have to put it all together like a big puzzle.
9:01 Regina Barber? And from the like Fjord Fido project, you have like more continuous data like from these passenger ships. What have you learned like in putting together this puzzle so far?
9:10 Speaker 02 So from this, we learned how these places were behaving like the whole summer. And then year after year, how that was changing.
9:20 Regina Barber? So you're just trying to like figure out like what the ecosystem even looks like.
9:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:25 Regina Barber? Okay, cool.
9:25 Speaker 02 At least for the phytoplankton level, yeah.
9:28 Regina Barber? Okay, so you've you've got samples from all these passenger ships. Um, what can you learn from those samples?
9:33 Speaker 02 We gather different kind of samples. So one sample is for microscopy counting. And that's the sample that I or the people at the university where I work analyze. Um, so what we do with that sample is like discriminate like different species. And how much of the different species are in the water column. Um, there's another sample that is for meltwater. What we do with that sample is analyze how much of the ocean water comes from the melting glaciers. And then another sample is for genetic analysis. There's also like other people that's gonna analyze that sample and like try to look at like
10:16 Speaker 02 the diversity of the phytoplankton, but like in a genetic way.
10:21 Regina Barber? So there's all different kinds of phytoplankton. And I know that they can bloom like this explosion in population, like maybe a couple of times a year. And even some of them are so big, you can see them from space. So um, can you see like a huge jump in the population in the samples that people like return um, to you during these blooms?
10:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, so from the samples that uh, we collected, we have recorded like several different blooms. So a bloom is like when a phytoplankton species or a group species, they're like super happy, they like this temperature, the nutrients, whatever they have. And they can just divide themselves and grow exponentially, but like in a couple hours or days. And so you get like millions of cells per liter of water.
11:09 Regina Barber? Wow.
11:09 Speaker 02 And so. You can have these huge blooms and you can sometimes see them like from space or like even in the water you see like. You know, there's uh what they call like red ties when you see like red coloration in the water. That's phytoplankton blooms, but sometimes they are like not evident at all. Unless you count the cells or you like you look at them under the microscope that you actually identify these blooms. Um, so yeah, we have been looking at the samples and finding a lot of different blooms. Uh, in the different years, some years with like. More blooms or like diverse blooms and some with less phytoplankton.
11:52 Regina Barber? Can you talk about what would happen if something happens to these phytoplankton and their numbers start to decline? Like, how would that affect other things?
12:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's really hard to say if the phytoplankton is actually going to decline or not. Um, or if it's, it is more, I mean, there are some theories that say they're more likely to switch. Like the species are going to be different.
12:17 Regina Barber? Hmm.
12:17 Speaker 02 Um, but of course, every single thing that happens gonna have an impact. Uh, on the rest of the ecosystem in Antarctica especially. Uh, so everything kind of relies on krill. Krill is this little crustacean, it kind of looks like shrimp and it's. Uh, what we sometimes hear about like, oh, what whales eat. But mostly everything in Antarctica at some point relies on krill. And krill relies on a specific group of phytoplankton, which are the larger. Uh, diatoms. So what happens if the diatoms are not there anymore?
12:56 Speaker 02 They will have to look for other food and that would have like a major impact on. The rest of the ecosystem.
13:05 Regina Barber? Why do you think like really understanding this ecosystem, really. Understanding the populations of phytoplankton in Antarctica, why is that so important?
13:14 Speaker 02 Well, I feel like the time is now to understand these places before like they change or they're gone. A lot of things that could be super cool happening and we have no idea. Like, you know, sometimes you see in the news like, oh, they discovered like this very weird protein that has this anti-quackland aspect or something. And they found it in like a fish that was hiding in the world. Um, so probably there's a lot of things happening too that we have no idea. Especially thinking more like Antarctica and like how the organisms are adapted to live that way.
13:56 Speaker 02 So, yeah, maybe it's the key for something good hiding there.
14:03 Regina Barber? I like that thought. It's very optimistic. Uh, Martina, thank you so much for talking with me today.
14:09 Speaker 02 No, it was super fun.
14:14 Regina Barber? To learn more about the Fjord Fido Project, check out the link in our episode notes. And if you liked this episode, follow us on whatever podcasting platform you're listening from. That way you'll never miss a new episode. This episode was produced by Burley McCoy and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from NPR.
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