What has plankton ever done for us? Actually, a great deal. Take a deep breath. Half of the oxygen available to us when we breathe is made by plankton. The stunning array of green and blue colors of the ocean? That’s plankton. The unmistakable smell at the beach – that is decaying plankton!
On the south coast of England is a world-renowned hub dedicated to marine ecology and where, for the last 30 years, they’ve been monitoring changes to plankton communities in the sea surrounding them.
RAZOR’s Gabrielle Lawrence meets the scientists at Plymouth Marine Laboratory researching one of the most vital organisms on Earth.
Every week, Claire Widdicombe collects and analyses samples of plankton as part of long-running time series collecting plankton data. An arduous task, but state of the art technology is set to upscale their data through round-the-clock sampling and imaging.
But plankton face a number of threats as our planet warms and our oceans change.
2 Comments
Beautifully done. Huge issues everyone seems to be oblivious about. Thank you so much! I passed it on to a few science-minded folks. Again, appreciate this very much 💕
Oh yeah…. We're in such deep doo doo 😥 such a beautiful planet and Humanity is totally screwed up. However, good people like you folks are what it's really all about to get up everyday 🫂
out of sight out of mind for most people