These blooms indicate proliferation of phytoplankton that is fundamental to ocean life and climate regulation.
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Phytoplankton -- microscopic organisms that congregate near the ocean surface - absorb atmospheric CO2 through photosynthesis.
They therefore suspect the main source of food for AAPB is dissolved organic matter released by phytoplankton.
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As well as playing an important role in food chains, phytoplankton also absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
He thinks there'll be phytoplankton boom - bloom, and it'll suck all the CO2 out of the air.
Martin tested his hypothesis in Antarctica and found that phytoplankton thrived in jars of seawater infused with iron.
Scientists have known for some time that large swathes of the earth's oceans harbor extremely low densities of phytoplankton.
Krill (crustaceans resembling prawns) subsist on phytoplankton and are in turn eaten by fish, squid, jellyfish, seabirds, penguins, seals, whales and other animals.
Phytoplankton usually blooms in the spring, but dies back in the summer.
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We need to do a lot more analysis back at the lab before we can confirm the volcano has caused extra phytoplankton growth.
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Scientists have to work through the night to collect biological samples during the brief hours of darkness when the phytoplankton is not photosynthesizing.
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Marine Scotland Scientists have sampled the foam and seawater around Footdee, using a microscope to examine the phytoplankton - very small algae - present.
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Traditionally people have believed that a lot of energy within the ecosystem is dependent on primary production of phytoplankton but we believe recycling has a strong input.
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She met with him last December when he came to visit her lab, where she researches the ocean phytoplankton Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic cell on the planet.
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Growth of phytoplankton in certain areas is usually limited by lack of iron in the water, and the sub polar Atlantic is believed to be one of these areas.
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The Census of Marine Life reported that phytoplankton, the microscopic plants producing most of the oxygen from the oceans, have been declining by around 1% a year since 1900.
Furthermore, multi-decade time series, including the Hawaii Ocean Time Series, the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series, and the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations, also showed increasing phytoplankton biomass during the past 20-to-50 years.
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Planktos had announced that it would dump tons of iron dust in the ocean to spark the growth of phytoplankton, and then sell credits based on how much carbon the phytoplankton consumed.
Some of the data it gathered about the abundance of phytoplankton - plant-like organisms that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and provide food for other sea life - could already be monitored by satellite.
Global warming alarmists and their allies in the media were ringing the alarm bells last summer after a study in the journal Nature claimed the global phytoplankton population had declined by 40% since 1950.
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There have been some unexpected responses, for instance markedly different phytoplankton communities and total biomass resulted from two iron addition experiments conducted a year apart at the same site in the north west Pacific Ocean.
"The dispersant is moving the oil down out of the surface and into the deeper waters, where it can affect phytoplankton and other marine life, " said John Paul, a marine microbiologist at the University of South Florida.
But data on phytoplankton populations is sparse.
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However during the bloom triggered by the ash deposits from the eruption, the team recorded that it was a shortage of nitrogen that limited the size of the phytoplankton bloom and - as a result - the volume of carbon dioxide uptake.
Scientists fear that the population of phytoplankton in the world's oceans is being affected by rising sea temperatures, with a paper published in the journal Nature in 2010 controversially suggesting that it had declined by as much as 40% since the 1950s due to climate change.
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So while the additional dissolved iron triggered an earlier-than-usual phytoplankton bloom, as the metal triggered growth in a greater number of phytoplankton cells, the bloom was only 15-20% larger than normal because the growth was limited by the amount of available nitrogen, another vital ingredient required for the organisms to develop.
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