Sea snot explosion in Pacific

[thinker]

http://www.sott.net/article/272804-Dead-sea-life-covers-98-of-Pacific-Ocean-floor-after-Fukushima
Sea life in the Pacific Ocean is dying off at an alarming rate, and the peak of all this death and destruction coincides with a certain nuclear disaster that ironically occurred on the Pacific coast of Japan. Still, scientists analyzing what's referred to as "sea snot" point their finger at global warming, refusing to even mention the radiation from Fukushima. Normally, this snot covers about 1% of the floor. Now, it seems to be covering about 98% of it.

This article on sott is misleading. Please compare with the original:

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/22/sea-snot-explosions-feed-deep-sea-creatures/
It’s a feast of epic proportions. Storms of “sea snot”—a mix of dead plankton and gelatinous sea creatures, and their feces—drift to the ocean floor, where deep-sea organisms gobble up the sudden windfall.
But these snotty blizzards aren’t just an occasional bonus to life at the bottom of the ocean—new research shows they depend on it to stay alive.
The scientists found that not long after sea snot blooms drift to the seafloor, the activity of these deep-sea critters accelerated. (See “Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger.”)
Global warming and ocean acidification, however, may be increasing the frequency of these sea snot storms, which could have unforeseen effects on marine life by altering how nutrients move around the oceans.
“In the 24 years of this study, the past 2 years have been the biggest amounts of this detritus by far,” said study leader Christine Huffard, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.

It's an explosion of plankton bloom, not a 98% life die off in the ocean...

 

[Ben]

I disagree, the substance is composed of detritus and dead plankton. Plankton does not 'cover the sea floor' by its very definition.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Also, it's saying "covering about 98% of it [sea floor]" not 98% die off.

 

[thinker]

http://serc.carleton.edu/eet/phytoplankton/primer.html
a bloom can be considered as a phytoplankton population explosion-blooms occur when sunlight and nutrients are readily available to the plants, and they grow and reproduce to a point where they are so dense that their presence changes the color of the water in which they live. Blooms can be quick events that begin and end within a few days or they may last several weeks. They can occur on a relatively small scale or cover hundreds of square kilometers of the ocean's surface ... As spring turns to summer, nutrients in the surface layer are consumed by phytoplankton, reducing nutrient availability at the surface. As summer sets in, phytoplankton die and drift to the bottom, taking the nutrients they ingested with them

Some photos:
http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/02_02/bloom_art.shtml

Like I said, it's a natural process where plankton blooms then dies and drifts to the bottom. The only exceptional about it was the size of the bloom.
She says "Sea life in the Pacific Ocean is dying off at an alarming rate" and even has a photo of dead fish on a beach.
The title is "Dead sea life covers 98% of Pacific Ocean floor after Fukushima" when it was 98% of seafloor beneath Station M.
You seriously don't see anything wrong with that?

 

[nektonic]

More details on the subject:

http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2013/feast&famine/feast&famine-clarification.html

and

http://deepseanews.com/2014/01/is-the-sea-floor-littered-with-dead-animals-due-to-radiation-no/

 

[Zadius Sky]

Welcome to the forum, nektonic.

Seeing as this is your first post on the forum, we would appreciate it if you could post a brief intro about yourself in the Newbies section, telling us how you found this forum, how long you've been reading it and/or the SOTT page, etc. You can take a look at other posts there and see how it was done.

:)

 

[MusicMan]

What is detritus for one species is food for another. What goes around comes around.