Climate Variation, Food Availability, and Deep-Sea Ecosystems

The vast muddy expanses of the abyssal plains occupy about 60 percent of the Earth's surface and are important in global carbon cycling. Changes in the Earth's climate can cause unexpectedly large changes in deep-sea ecosystems. Based on 18 years of studies, MBARI's Ken Smith and his coauthors showed that such ecosystem changes occur over short time scales of weeks to months, as well as over longer periods of years to decades.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Climate
• MBARI
• Youtube
• Deep-sea
• abyssal

[hatchi58]

so you are saying that you have found a direct correlation between the surface temps and the populations inhabiting the abyssal plain?

if the abyssal plain is so large as you said in the video, would there not be innumerable factors affecting life on the plain?

how large was your study in terms of acreage?

[MBARIvideo]

Temperature influences food production in the surface waters and ultimately affects food supply to the deep ocean.This appears to be the main driving factor of change at abyssal depths. As for the size of our study site in acres, with all the trawling and free-vehicle deployments over the past 20 years, we have covered approximately 6.4 million acres. Ken.

[Bernadotte01]

problem 1) "Much of this sediment is deposited by turbidity currents that have been channeled from the continental margins along submarine canyons down into deeper water" (wikipedia re: abyssal plains)

problem 2) hydrothermal vents and cold seepsform at the abyssal zone, the former spewing copious amounts of bacteria/archaea from the bowels of the earth. That may not matter in the places you sampled. Dunno.

Nevertheless, most of the MBARI clips are beautiful and informative. Cheers.

[hatchi58]

@MBARIvideo 6 million acres is commendable, however I have calculated the total acreage of the Abyssal Plain at approximately 22 billion acres.

I find it hard to believe in research that is highly funded to state facts that are unsubstantial.

To be fair, you have covered approximately .003% of the Abyssal Plain in the past 20 years of research.

Slick package though...

[Rendova1]

Nicely done. Thank you for posting!

[blake1405]

Cool :)