We need to better understand and appreciate the smallest plants and animals in the sea and why they are so important for ALL life on earth! Without a healthy ocean supported by living plankon, life as we know it would cease to exist.

• PLANKTON FACTS
  
  Plankton (from the Greek word meaning "wanderer") are marine organisms which drift about the world's oceans at the mercy of the winds, tides and currents.
  
  Plankton can be plants called "phytoplankton" which create energy by photosynthesis, just like land plants, or animals called "zooplankton" which feed on phytoplankton or other zoo-plankton, just like land animals.
  
  Most plankton are so small you need a microscope to see them but range in size up to giant jellyfish 3 metres across and 30 metres long!
  
  Phytoplankton are found near the sea surface since they need sunlight to grow. In some places a litre of seawater may contain dozens of different types and as many as 10-20 million cells.
  
  When there's lots of sun and nutrients, phytoplankton can bloom like crazy and multiply so much they change the colour of some ocean areas. An example being the Red Sea.
  
  Some phytoplankton make the most potent nerve poisons ever found and cause "toxic algal blooms" that kill fish, whales and even humans. Every year, many people in New Zealand get sick from eating shellfish that feed on poisonous plankton.
  
  
• Some zooplankton drift in the open sea their whole lives while others are the baby forms of crabs, sea urchins and other common rock pool animals.
  
  Tiny, shrimp-like animals called copepods are the largest source of protein in the ocean and are sometimes called the insects of the sea because there are about 10,000 species!!
  
  Copepods are also the fastest animals on the planet! If they were the size of a cheetah they would be able to run at 3,000 kph!!

Check out our Plankton Comic

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WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT PLANKTON?

Plankton are the basis of all life in the ocean and food for larger marine animals from shellfish to large fish and even whales.

The largest fish in the world, the Whale Shark, is a plankton feeder and "krill", one of the ocean's smallest animals, is dinner for its largest, the blue whale!

Studying plankton can tell scientists about water quality and the amount of nutrients in different areas of the oceans, and how many fish there are likely to be in future years.

Almost 70% of the oxygen we breathe comes from the oceans and is made by phytoplankton. Without phytoplankton, there would be no life in the oceans or on Earth!!

Plankton also absorbs most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere (caused by cutting down forests and burning fossil fuels) by converting it to oxygen (O2) or by sinking it to the bottom of the sea where it canÕt escape.

Land plants are really important too, but the health of the oceans is even more important.

Plankton are the most abundant life form on Earth, except for bacteria. In fact, all the plankton in the oceans weigh more than all the dolphins, fish and whales put together!

Plankton may be microscopic in size, but they play a giant role in the Earth's ecosystems!!

Plankton is very important for all life on this planet. Without it both the ocean and the land would become a desert.

Where there's lots of sunlight, phytoplankton grows quickly, mopping up carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen and providing food for zooplankton and the rest of the ocean food web including whales.

When plankton die they fall to the bottom of the ocean and break down like compost and help fertilise new plankton growth..

But not all dead plankton breaks down quickly. Some of it gets buried in layers of sand and mud which builds up over time crushing and heating the plankton and causing chemical changes.

After millions and millions of years of this slow "cooking", the dead plankton turns into pools of crude oil and natural gas which we use to make petrol for our cars, boats and planes, and to generate electricity.
When we burn these "ancient" oils and gases we release the carbon locked up in the fossilized phytoplankton back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

This is really important because carbon dioxide is a green house gas that contributes to global warming.

If there was ever too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we wouldn't be able to breathe! But long before that happened, the atmosphere would heat up and the polar ice-caps would melt.

If that happened, the weather and ocean currents would change which would affect all life in the oceans and on land. So, the less CO2 that we have in the atmosphere, the better for all of us!

Plastic and lots of other chemicals are also made from oil, and plastic pollution can seriously damage or kill marine life in the sea.

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