PHYTOPLA Primary Producer
By: Alexandrya Robinso
Under the microscope, a single drop of sea water is teeming with life. In just one liter of ocean water, there can be upwards of a million different phytoplankton and half a million zooplankton! That is just a fraction of the billions of different bacteria and viruses. So many different things live inside just a small amount of water, and these microscopic organisms form the basis of the marine food chain. This food chain starts with phytoplankton which are drifting photosynthetic algae, plants, and bacteria that feed both small and large organisms. There are different kinds of phytoplankton that support the diets of different organisms. The major kinds of phytoplankton include algae, cyanobacteria, coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinoflagellates.
This is Prochlorococcus, a type of marine cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria are algae that live in both fresh and saltwater. This species, while incredibly small, supports a host of zooplankton species including meroplankton (organisms that spend only a portion of their life in the planktonic stage) and different species of zooplankton.
This is an example of a diatom, an algae with a silicate housing. Diatoms are one of the most abundant species of phytoplankton and produce high levels of oxygen. They also support fish and crabs as a food source in both their larval and adult stages.
16| Seawords
