MessageToEagle.com

Amazing Discovery Of Biological Plant Life
In Arctic Ocean Waters - Researchers Express Concern

June 8, 2012

MessageToEagle.com - Scientists have made a dramatic and rather unexpected discovery of an enormous diversity of biological plant life at the depths of the Arctic Ocean.

"If someone had asked me before the expedition whether we would see under-ice blooms, I would have told them it was impossible," said Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., who lead the ICESCAPE mission.

"This discovery was a complete surprise."

At the same time, it raises potential concerns for environment on the Arctic Ocean and its ecology. It also reveals a new, dangerous consequence of the Arctic's warming climate.

Scientists punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, essential to all sea life, than any other ocean region on Earth.

The discovery was made during a NASA oceanographic expedition in the summers of 2010 and 2011.

ICESCAPE, (Impacts of Climate on EcoSystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment) explored the Arctic Ocean in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas along Alaska's western and northern coasts on board a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker.

The expedition used optical technologies to look for impacts of environmental change in the Arctic region.

"Part of NASA's mission is pioneering scientific discovery, and this is like finding the Amazon rainforest in the middle of the Mojave Desert," explained Paula Bontempi, NASA's ocean biology and biogeochemistry program manager.

"We embarked on ICESCAPE to validate our satellite ocean-observing data in an area of the Earth that is very difficult to get to. We wound up making a discovery that hopefully will help researchers and resource managers better understand the Arctic."


Credits: MASA/ICESCAPE


The biological life discovered includes phytoplankton, which are microscopic plants at the base of the marine food chain.
Scientists claim that the effects of global warming are thinning Arctic ice, allowing sunlight to reach deeper into the ocean and create plant blooms in places where they have never before been observed.

Blooms in open waters grow at a much slower rate, doubling in two to three days. These growth rates are among the highest ever measured for polar waters.
Researchers estimate that phytoplankton production under the ice in parts of the Arctic could be up to 10 times higher than in the nearby open ocean.


Credits: MASA/ICESCAPE


Fast-growing phytoplankton consume large amounts of carbon dioxide. The study concludes that scientists will have to reassess the amount of carbon dioxide entering the Arctic Ocean through biological activity if the under-ice blooms turn out to be common.

"At this point we don't know whether these rich phytoplankton blooms have been happening in the Arctic for a long time and we just haven't observed them before," Arrigo said.

"These blooms could become more widespread in the future, however, if the Arctic sea ice cover continues to thin."



The researchers observed blooms beneath the ice that extended from the sea-ice edge to 72 miles into the ice pack. Ocean current data revealed that these blooms developed under the ice and had not drifted there from open water, where phytoplankton concentrations can be high.

The broader implications for the Arctic ecosystem posed by this discovery might affect migratory species like whales and birds that eat phytoplankton. Their migratory and dietary habits could possibly change due to the formation of this biological life spot.

"It could make it harder and harder for migratory species to time their life cycles to be in the Arctic when the bloom is at its peak. If their food supply is coming earlier, they might be missing the boat," Arrigo warned.

The findings were published in the team's paper.


@ MessageToEagle.com

See also:
Do Gateways To The Underworld Open? Next Dangerous And Unexpected Opening In The Ground!

Follow MessageToEagle.com for the latest news on Facebook and Twitter !

Don't Miss Our Stories! Get Our Daily Email Newsletter

Enter your email address:


Once you have confirmed your email address, you will be subscribed to the newsletter.

Recommend this article:


Incredible Images Show Giant Sinkhole In Sweden Keeps Expanding!

It looks like something taken straight from a horror movie. An enormous hole leading to hell, some would say. But this is not a movie. This is a real and dangerous phenomenon. New shocking images clearly show the enormous pit in Sweden is expanding...

6 Surprising Things Falling From The Sky

Subscribe To Our Space, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Earth and Xenology News!

Grab the latest RSS feeds right to your reader, desktop or mobile phone.

Subscribe to RSS headline updates from:
Powered by FeedBurner

Go to - MAIN PAGE

Copyright @ MessageToEagle.com All rights reserved.
Go to - MAIN PAGE

 Subscribe in a reader

Join Us On Facebook!

Other Popular Articles


Huge Active Fault Found Directly Under Mount Fuji It Can Trigger Strong Earthquake

Acccording to recent survey, a huge active fault was found under Mount Fuji, standing at 3,776 meters (12,385 feet) above sea level. The fault, about 30 kilometers long, extends from just beneath the surface to a depth of about 5 km. Mount Fuji, the highest and the nearly perfectly shaped peak in Japan, has been worshipped as a sacred mountain.


Unusual Natural Phenomena

Earth is a fantastic and beautiful planet full of wonders. No matter where we decide to go there is always something amazing to admire in all corners of the world, from the East to the West, from the South to the North, our planet offers a mixture of amazingly mysterious experiences which can occasionally even be somewhat dangerous.


The Manta Ray - A Mysterious Beautiful Ocean Giant Organism Needs Protection!

They are beautiful, remarkably elegant and extremely large oceanic creatures - named manta rays. One cannot say that they swim like fish; they rather gracefully glide through the watery realm. They are harmless to humans and lacks the stinger of the better-known stingray.


They Produce Water From The Air! An Amazing Invention For Those Who Really Need It!

"How can we help someone so powerful they can create water out of thin air?" an astonished Jabin yells in Star Trek's Caretaker. If you are a Star Trek fan you will remember how the Kazons try to aquire technology that can create water our of thin air. This technology is no longer in the realms of science fiction. Today we can really create water out of thin air!


Something New Spotted On The Sun

One day in the fall of 2011, Neil Sheeley, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did what he always does – look through the daily images of the sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). But on this day he saw something he'd never noticed before: a pattern of cells with bright centers and dark boundaries occurring in the sun's atmosphere, the corona...

Hidden Misshapen Celestial "Wonder"
It is one of the brightest and strangest objects in the Milky Way - the corpse of a star that exploded around 1000 years ago. Only a handful of such young supernova remnants are known. The object named G350.1-0.3 is also incredibly small (only eight light years across) and young in astronomical terms.


Dangerous Fast and Furious - Birth Of Africa's New Ocean - with video

The only places where mid-ocean ridges appear above sea level are Ethiopia and Iceland. Two new studies into the so-called “plumbing systems” that lie under volcanoes could bring scientists closer to predicting large eruptions and reveal new information about where magma is stored and how it moves through the geological plumbing network.


Volcanic Super-Eruptions Could End Civilizations

Enormous volcanic eruptions with potential to end civilizations may have surprisingly short fuses, researchers have discovered. These eruptions are known as super-eruptions because they are more than 100 times the size of ordinary volcanic eruptions like Mount St. Helens.


Most Dangerous Volcanoes In The World!

Volcanoes are unpredictable, deadly and fascinating.
They can be dormant for even many centuries, so people visit their mighty peaks, grow crops on rich volcanic soils, even build houses in their vicinity...



Ground-Breaking Discovery Suggests Gravity May Not Be A Fundamental Force Of Nature

Can information really escape from a black hole? According to new research it seems to be possible for something to actually escape from a black hole.
If correct, the results are ground-breaking suggesting that gravity may not be a fundamental force of Nature after all!


Free-Floating' Planets Are Nomad Alien Worlds That Fly With "Warp Speed" Through The Space

Billions of stars in our galaxy have captured nomad, alien worlds that once roamed interstellar space.
The nomad worlds, which were kicked out of the star systems in which they formed, occasionally find a new home with a different sun...

"Warming Hole" In The Sky Appears Over US
Scientists are still unable to determine what is causing the "warming hole" over United States. Some have suggested natural variations in sea surface temperatures could be responsible, but recent studies indicate the hole has been created due to air pollution. Temperatures are increasing on global scale, but in the central and eastern United States warming has not kept pace with other parts of the world over much of the last century.

W3Counter