The Insanely Important World of Phytoplankton 🤯 (SHORT)

追加: 2026-05-07

[00:00:01]important. I mean, there's many things that [music] are important, but these are insanely important. Plankton doesn't really mean like a taxonomic [music] group of things. Like, you know, we think about mammals and then plants and plankton are not that. Plankton are really defined by the way they live.

[00:00:13]Plankton means the wanderer in Greek.

[00:00:15][music] And and these are just oceanic organisms that really just don't swim that fast they can fight the ocean currents. But it's it's a really non-traditional way of thinking about biology in a sense.

[00:00:24]Plankton, [music] we can define traditionally in zooplankton something that is kind of more animal-like and phytoplankton something that is more plant-like. All phytoplankton does is produce what we call photosynthesis.

[00:00:34]>> [music] >> They take carbon dioxide and carbon in organic form, capture some of the sunlight, and then produce our carbohydrates or [music] just simply said sugars, they now are carrying that sun energy and push it into the food system of the ocean. [music] And while they're doing all that stuff, they also produce the oxygen. So opposite from us, we inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide.

[00:00:49]So that's why they're really important.

[00:00:50]That's why we love them so much and that's why they're [music] like really crucial for the the whole life on the earth.

[00:00:55]Phytoplankton itself, its [music] diversity is gigantic. I think there's like 10,000 species and each of them has a specific role.

[00:01:01]Why is there so much diversity in something that is so teeny tiny? It's fantasy, science fiction, and horror comes together. I mean, >> [music] >> it's it's just so beautiful.

[00:01:09]But there's certain type of phytoplankton called coccolithophores.

[00:01:11]And specifically the most famous one is Emiliania huxleyi.

[00:01:14]But they take [music] this inorganic carbon to make that something like like a shell in which they live in. They're calcium [music] carbonate which they make which is pretty much chalk. They make it in a shape shape of these hubcaps. And if you think about how teeny tiny they are, they're like, you know, I don't know, I can put probably like 30 or 40 or 50 of them in the width of my hair.

[00:01:30]When they bloom, once they die, not only they take that normal like sugar carbon that they produce, but also take that calcium carbonate, that inorganic, that chalky material [music] down to the bottom of the ocean. So they're really really good for exporting carbon, um removing it from this this contact with the [music] atmosphere, which is really important when it comes to the flow of carbon in the whole, you know, earth ecosystem, but also control of the carbon in the atmosphere.

[00:01:50]>> [music] >> So Alexandrium is a very specific type of phytoplankton. It's called a dinoflagellate. So it's kind of like maybe plankton, maybe zooplankton, maybe it's animal, maybe it can be both, you know? But one thing that it does, it makes this very [music] very very very powerful toxin. It causes problems in Gulf of Maine.

[00:02:03]Alexandrium, you don't have to have a lot.

[00:02:05]>> [music] >> Actually, really low numbers of Alexandrium can be present on this on the shellfish.

[00:02:10]So the changes of of the color of the ocean due to the presence of this [music] phytoplankton are just so miniature, you know? We cannot see it with our eyes. But if we have sensitive instruments such as ocean color instrument [music] on PACE, we're going to be able to differentiate not only because it's sensitive to the intensity, but it's also sensitive to the colors.

[00:02:26]Having this hyperspectral view with really high [music] sensitivity is going to allow me to differentiate much much more of the phytoplankton because each of them, >> [music] >> at least each group, has its own optical pattern. It's an optical fingerprint.

[00:02:37]We're hoping that [music] PACE, due to its capabilities, is going to be able to really focus on specific species [music] of interest such as the harmful algal bloom species or or species that are very beneficial for the growth of certain [music] organisms.

[00:02:48]So this speciation is a function of the technical abilities that PACE has, but it's also it's a function of our capabilities [music] to understand the local ecosystem.