In marine biology this week our class made a small, marine ecosystem food web. Each member of the class was assigned a organism in the web to represent and held string that linked them to their prey and predators and thus created a web. I was the benthic fish, a primary consumer, which eats clams and is eaten by birds. If the benthic fish were to be taking out of the food web, the population of clams would increase and the population of birds would decrease, the marine ecosystem as a whole would suffer.
Phytoplankton
A.) Phytoplankton are so important to the marine food web because is the most base of all life in the sea. All of the organisms in the sea, large and small, survive because of the plankton either directly or indirectly. Phytoplankton cover such a large amount of the ocean in a millimeter thick stream. B) Through our lab we found that dead diatoms make up diatomaceous earth, and can be used in toothpaste, filters, reflective paint and pesticides.
Energy Flow
In order for an ecosystem to survive, there needs to be a flow of energy between the organisms. The plankton are eaten by some other organism which is eaten by another organism. The energy flow is just the flow of organisms through the trophic levels. For example plankton is eaten by krill which is eaten by penguins which is eaten by a seal which is eaten by a killer whale.
Human Impacts
Humans only disrupt the natural marine food web. We as humans disrupt the ecosystem for the most part because of pollution, over fishing and wasteful methods of catching fish , like drag netting. Over fishing, pollution and by-catch severely upset the balance of ecosystems and oceans as a whole.
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