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Plankton

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Phytoplankton include tiny one-celled eukaryotes which do photosynthesis
Noctiluca scintillans is a dinoflagellate which eats up other tiny plankton
Northern krill, the favourite food of the baleen whales

Plankton are drifting organisms that live in the surface layers of the ocean. They live in the top layer of the ocean, called the epipelagic zone. They are not strong enough to swim against ocean currents. The term is in contrast to nekton, who can control their movements.[1] There are three groups:

Plankton are important in the ocean's food chain. They are the main source of food for almost all fish larvae as they switch from their yolk sacs to catching prey. Basking sharks and blue whales feed on them directly; other large fish feed on them indirectly, by eating fish of smaller size, such as herrings.

The distribution of plankton is governed more by nutrients than by temperature. Large tracts of ocean are blue and sterile. The reason is that these areas lack one or more crucial nutrients for the photosynthetic plankton, upon whom all the others depend. Broadly speaking, areas near land masses get nutrients by rivers and wind. The key nutrient lacking in the Pacific ocean is iron, essential in molecules such as ferredoxins, iron-sulfur proteins which do electron transfer in a range of metabolic reactions.

References

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  1. Thurman H.V. 1997. Introductory oceanography. Prentice Hall, N.J. ISBN 0-13-262072-3.