Process
Photosynthesis
Using light energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar, releasing oxygen.
Phytoplankton
Microscopic photosynthetic organisms drifting in sunlit water. Ocean producers account for roughly half of the carbon fixed on Earth each year.Source: NOAASource: Field et al., 1998
Step 2 of 7ReadingOrganism or group
How Phytoplankton connects
Phytoplankton uses
Phytoplankton makes possible
Process
Primary production
Carbon fixed by plants, algae and photosynthetic microbes: about 105 billion tonnes a year worldwide, roughly half on land and half in the ocean.
Phytoplankton includes the example
Organism or group
Prochlorococcus
The smallest known photosynthetic organism, about half a micrometer across. The ocean holds an estimated 2.9 × 10²⁷ of these cells.
Phytoplankton is part of
Idea or model
Ocean zones
The ocean is layered by depth. Only the upper 200 meters gets enough light for photosynthesis, and below 1,000 meters it is completely dark.
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Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
What are phytoplankton? (opens the original in a new tab)
NOAA National Ocean Service. oceanservice.noaa.gov. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Fact sheetGovernment sourcePrimary production of the biosphere: integrating terrestrial and oceanic components (opens the original in a new tab)
Field CB, Behrenfeld MJ, Randerson JT, et al. (1998). Science 281:237-240.
Global net primary production of about 105 petagrams of carbon per year, split roughly evenly between land and ocean.
Peer-reviewedPrimary research