It goes without saying that light is absolutely essential to life on earth. This is true no matter where that life is found. From lakes hidden beneath mountains, to the jungle floor, to the depth of the ocean, light is essential. Now, you may be asking yourself exactly what I’m talking about, after all, at least two of those places don’t even see any light. What can light have to do with life in a cave, or at the bottom of the ocean? Well, in both cases, there is a good chance that any life present generates its own light. And in the case of the hidden lake, there is a good chance it would be fed with streams, bringing in a constant flow from the outside. Life at the bottom of the ocean in part depends on the leftovers that filter down from the surface.
That is where the light comes in, providing the base level of sustenance from outside what might at first seem like a closed ecosystem. If you really think about it, there is no such thing as a closed ecosystem. Even thinking of the whole earth as a single ecosystem, it isn’t really closed. It gets its primary energy source from the sun, without which everything would die. No sun equals no plants, equals no animals and therefore, no people.
That’s because the sun is at the base of the food chain, it feeds the plants on land which feed everything on and above the land. The sun also feeds the phytoplankton that forms the basis of the ocean’s ecosystem. No phytoplankton means no fish. That in turn would take away a major food source for many of our birds and other land animals that prefer seafood from time to time.
Unfortunately, some of our practices may be putting the phytoplankton at risk. Fertilizers are causing algal blooms and boats tend to kick up silt in areas near the coast, literally causing the ocean to get darker. Natural factors contribute to this as well, such as rain washing loose soil and plant matter into the oceans, however that is something the ecosystem has developed to deal with. The fertilizers and boats could be adding more strain than the system can sustain.
Researchers at the University of Germany have been conducting experiments to determine what the effects of this darkening might be on the ecosystem. Higher concentrations of material obviously reduce the level of sunlight that can penetrate the water. What is interesting is that the experiments indicated that the phytoplankton didn’t become significantly affected until there was a 62% decrease in sunlight. This shows that the little critters might be more resilient than thought. However, that is not a good reason for complacency. The darkening could continue if unabated, or stay at a lower level but one that still has a detrimental effect.
There are other potential disruptions that could occur regardless of the condition of the phytoplankton. Some marine life that relies on sight would have a harder time finding food. As those species die-off it would make room for species that don’t rely on sight, such as jellyfish. The introduction of a new predator into an ecosystem is sure to further upset the apple cart.
We have to start looking at these things and figuring out how to deal with them. Many of those fertilizers may be getting used to grow food for people. We obviously don’t want to just stop that. However, we should try to find ways to grow more crops without so much fertilizer and we could definitely discourage people from using fertilizers on their lawns.
Finding lasting solutions to these problems is going to take a lot of data. You can help by signing up with TARTLE and sharing your data with environmental researchers. It will help them determine the causes of various problems as well as helping them figure out solutions.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
It goes without saying that light is absolutely essential to life on earth. This is true no matter where that life is found. From lakes hidden beneath mountains, to the jungle floor, to the depth of the ocean, light is essential.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to TARTLEcast with your hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path, the path.
Alexander McCaig (00:25):
I'm gassed this morning. I'm not going to lie.
Jason Rigby (00:26):
Gassed?
Alexander McCaig (00:28):
I'm tired. There's a murkiness in my brain.
Jason Rigby (00:31):
Is it dark?
Alexander McCaig (00:32):
There's not much light coming through here. You know what I mean? I'm really feeling just bogged down.
Jason Rigby (00:38):
Whenever you think of darkness and no clarity...
Alexander McCaig (00:41):
How often do you think of darkness?
Jason Rigby (00:43):
Just about every day, when I get into my little depression there, Alex. We can go into this.
Alexander McCaig (00:49):
[crosstalk 00:00:49] fast food?
Jason Rigby (00:50):
Yeah, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (00:52):
You want me to pull the blinds down a little low [crosstalk 00:00:55]?
Jason Rigby (00:56):
On my other podcast, I did a whole podcast on how fast food causes depression.
Alexander McCaig (01:01):
And?
Jason Rigby (01:02):
It does.
Alexander McCaig (01:03):
Yeah, no, I'm interested though.
Jason Rigby (01:05):
Oh, you're interested in this?
Alexander McCaig (01:06):
Yeah, please tell me.
Jason Rigby (01:07):
Whenever you look at what's in the food, whether it's Burger King, McDonald's, Taco Bell, whatever it may be. Taco Bell, it's not even meat. Subway, you can't label it as bread. The UK just came out with. Pound per pound, how many chemicals and genetically modified... Some genetic modified food is good but the amount of sugar that we're taking into our body, then the amount of carbohydrates, simple carbohydrates that we're putting into our body, and complex carbohydrates, and not getting any sun, which, we'll get into that, which regulates our hormones, now we just have this over-producing fermented machine.
Alexander McCaig (01:49):
Ew.
Jason Rigby (01:49):
Think about it. That's what it's doing.
Alexander McCaig (01:51):
It sounds like a bog.
Jason Rigby (01:51):
That's how you brew beer.
Alexander McCaig (01:52):
It's like a murky bog, yeah.
Jason Rigby (01:53):
Yeah, you put sugar, turns to alcohol. What is it doing in your body?
Alexander McCaig (01:56):
Burning you up in the inside.
Jason Rigby (01:57):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That in turn allows your gut biome... Andrew Huberman talks about this. He's a neuroscientist at Stanford.
Alexander McCaig (02:12):
Don't ask me.
Jason Rigby (02:13):
Yeah, he's a great-
Alexander McCaig (02:14):
You're on it though.
Jason Rigby (02:16):
We have more feelings and emotions in our gut biome, and that is a bigger brain than our actual brain. The food that we put into our system and what we put into our system, in our gut-
Alexander McCaig (02:30):
Directly going to affect our emotions.
Jason Rigby (02:31):
It's going to directly affect our emotions.
Alexander McCaig (02:32):
That's amazing.
Jason Rigby (02:34):
Yeah, this is my bro science.
Alexander McCaig (02:35):
Thank you for that [crosstalk 00:02:36]
Jason Rigby (02:36):
You like Jason science?
Alexander McCaig (02:37):
Thank you for the clarity in this murkiness I'm in today.
Jason Rigby (02:41):
This darkness.
Alexander McCaig (02:41):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (02:42):
How does that relate to the ocean, Alex?
Alexander McCaig (02:44):
How does it relate to the ocean? Under our big seven here, we have a climate stability. This always comes back to number one, huh? Ye ole number one. If we have torrential flooding in certain areas, what it does is, it erodes the top soil and other organic material that moves into the ocean. As that goes in there, that blocks the amount of light penetration that moves through this water, acting as a medium, propagation of light through medium, and that light is required to feed the phytoplankton, which is the base of the food chain in the entire ocean. As you see the darkening in specific areas of these oceans because of increased flooding and organic material runoff going into the ocean from these terrestrial lands over here, what you find is that things that would typically thrive are not thriving and things that are very invasive to the ocean, like jellyfish, begin to bloom. When that becomes out of balance, now you have this weird, like almost parasitic drain on the health of the ocean in that area, because our over-consumption is having an effect on climate stability, which is causing torrential rains, eroding our land, sending it into the ocean, darkening the seas, killing off the major food supply and allowing other invasive species to move in and take over.
Jason Rigby (03:58):
Think about trying to rebalance something like that.
Alexander McCaig (04:01):
That's what this study is actually baking into here. Do you want to just touch on a couple of notes?
Jason Rigby (04:05):
Yeah, I thought this was really interesting... Maren Striebel?
Alexander McCaig (04:08):
Yup.
Jason Rigby (04:09):
An aquatic ecologist with the Coastal Ocean Darkening Project showed in a large-scale experiment the power of this phenomenon that you're talking about. In this study, Striebel and her team filled huge metal vats with water, phytoplankton and silt. From peat. The team extracted a brown liquid as an approximation of the dissolved organic matter found in coastal waters, this brown liquid. They put low, medium and high concentrations of the liquid in the vats and hung lamps above them to mimic the sun rays.
Alexander McCaig (04:35):
Correct.
Jason Rigby (04:36):
Very simple, we could do this at home. Over the first few weeks, the peat extract decreased the light's ability to penetrate the water by 27%, 62% and 86%.
Alexander McCaig (04:47):
Those are the three different amounts of this brown liquid they put in there?
Jason Rigby (04:50):
Yeah, the low, medium and high concentrates. Respectively, for the low, medium and high concentrates, the phytoplankton suffered from the lack of light, primarily in the medium and high concentrate vats. What we're seeing is, and they have satellite imaging of this, is off the coast, they have these images on this article, they don't have the pictures in the article, and it just shows these dark areas that were developing.
Alexander McCaig (05:12):
I don't like that.
Jason Rigby (05:13):
No. Dude, it looks so creepy. It bummed me out.
Alexander McCaig (05:16):
Yeah. Doesn't it just bum you out to watch the earth falling in on itself?
Jason Rigby (05:21):
Well, people don't realize phytoplankton is the base of the ocean's food web.
Alexander McCaig (05:25):
Yeah. Guys, it's this little blue-green algae looking organism that needs to bloom in sunlight, but if you cut off the sunlight, that's like saying... We got this big solar power plant in Nevada from Tesla.
Jason Rigby (05:39):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alexander McCaig (05:39):
Okay? The giga whatever. Imagine, shut the sun off. Well, it uses that plant. Then you got no electricity, so people cook it on their stoves can't cook anything. You can't feed. Sunlight is like one of those key drivers. If you're inhibiting that key driver from coming in and supporting the base of your food chain...
Jason Rigby (05:57):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (05:58):
You are screwed at that point.
Jason Rigby (06:01):
Yeah, and then the part that she was really worried about, which I thought was interesting, that biomass of phytoplankton, once it dropped, then other species got favored over that.
Alexander McCaig (06:10):
That's what I'm saying, like jellyfish.
Jason Rigby (06:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (06:12):
Things that thrive in darkness.
Jason Rigby (06:13):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (06:14):
Last time I checked, anything that thrived in darkness has never been good for humanity.
Jason Rigby (06:17):
No, no.
Alexander McCaig (06:20):
Oh, this is interesting. Why are little kids automatically afraid of monsters? There's that evolutionary thing with that. In the dark, being afraid of the dark... I was listening to Joe Rogan with talking about this with the scientists, very interesting. They were talking about, it's this whole thing of going out into the... If you're in those timeframes of hunter-gatherer when we get our evolutionary DNA from that, going out at night is dangerous and then an animal coming out and struggling you and trying to kill you. Cause we're helpless. I mean, you saw Naked and Afraid.
Jason Rigby (07:00):
Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (07:01):
I mean, you said as naked out in the middle, we can't hand it.
Alexander McCaig (07:05):
It's very, very, the odds of us being dropped into a rainforest.
Jason Rigby (07:09):
Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (07:10):
And surviving very, very small in the whole, I mean they've adapted,
Jason Rigby (07:15):
but being naked all the time when you want and why?
Alexander McCaig (07:19):
Yeah. I mean that right there,
Jason Rigby (07:20):
Hunter-gatherers had peltz.
Alexander McCaig (07:21):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What are, you'd have to create a that's what they're saying,
Jason Rigby (07:24):
Why are they afraid of monsters? You're going to tell me, I don't know, what's with the monsters?
Alexander McCaig (07:27):
So monsters is kind of like that same thing with the whole idea. And I don't want to get into aliens and all that stuff, but it's that whole same evolutionary idea of something in the dark coming out and startling you, like an animal would. And then our subconscious remembering from a long time ago, when there were different types of dimensional, and I don't want to get too crazy. Our listeners just tuned us out.
Jason Rigby (07:56):
You remember the movie with Howie.
Alexander McCaig (07:59):
There was Monsters Inc. That was a really fun.
Jason Rigby (08:00):
Howie Mandel, Little Monsters. He's like,
Alexander McCaig (08:03):
Oh yeah.
Jason Rigby (08:04):
That movie creeped the shit out of me.
Alexander McCaig (08:06):
Yeah, I can imagine.
Jason Rigby (08:07):
But he pulls you in another dimension, like underneath your bed.
Alexander McCaig (08:10):
That's what this is all about.
Jason Rigby (08:11):
No, thank you.
Alexander McCaig (08:12):
We have a natural innate, but you don't have to tell a child to be afraid of a monster.
Jason Rigby (08:16):
They just know it's a monster.
Alexander McCaig (08:17):
You know what creeps me out is clowns.
Jason Rigby (08:19):
Clowns are creepy.
Alexander McCaig (08:21):
To me, they're kind of creepy,
Jason Rigby (08:22):
Like the white face and like the heavy saturated red makeup/
Alexander McCaig (08:27):
I just kind of go in dark places when I see a clown. I don't like them.
Jason Rigby (08:29):
You're like the phytoplankton.
Alexander McCaig (08:30):
Plus they get in your space. there's a mask. And then they get in your study,
Jason Rigby (08:36):
Like a comfort zone and you're in it now.
Alexander McCaig (08:38):
And now you're acting too hyper.
Jason Rigby (08:40):
I'm in the uncomfort zone.
Alexander McCaig (08:41):
Yeah. I don't want your fucking.
Jason Rigby (08:43):
Honk honk. squeak. Squeak.
Alexander McCaig (08:44):
Dachshund balloon.
Jason Rigby (08:46):
Get it away from me.
Alexander McCaig (08:48):
I will pop that
Jason Rigby (08:48):
Buddy, I am literally,
Jason Rigby (08:50):
I was worried about phytoplankton in the ocean, but now more worried about you.
Alexander McCaig (08:56):
So what does decreased light availability have to do?
Jason Rigby (08:59):
What does it have to do with anything?
Alexander McCaig (09:00):
Yes.
Jason Rigby (09:01):
Listen, that is the primary driver for the phytoplankton. And if you look at all the different species within the ocean, that feed on phytoplankton and first of all, phytoplankton, and then you get krill, right?
Alexander McCaig (09:12):
Right.
Jason Rigby (09:13):
Shrimp. And those things are eating the... By the way, phytoplankton. Do you know how much they help with actually oxygen production? And also these organisms grab, methylmercury, and they eat it up and dissolve it.
Alexander McCaig (09:28):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (09:29):
If you are preventing these actions from occurring, this darkening is actually poisoning the ocean.
Alexander McCaig (09:36):
Yeah. And so this methylmercury, which we have an issue with mercury.
Jason Rigby (09:39):
Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (09:39):
We know that.
Jason Rigby (09:40):
Don't eat too much tuna.
Alexander McCaig (09:41):
Tat sunlight breaks down that toxic chemicals. So the sunlight, and we know this. We have known that you can take surgical instruments, put them out on a rock and they will sterilize them.
Jason Rigby (09:53):
Well, think about it. If you're out here in New Mexico and you find a dead cow, come back in a couple months.
Alexander McCaig (09:57):
Yeah.
Jason Rigby (09:58):
Not only is it going to be picked cleaned from the coyotes, but it's going to be bleach white.
Alexander McCaig (10:01):
Yes. And sterilized.
Jason Rigby (10:03):
Sterilized. It's just that UV sterilization that's essentially happening over time.
Alexander McCaig (10:07):
So that's, what's happening in the water too. And that cleans up the mercury. So if you have darkness, that mercury, that pollutant steeds around and then it gets transferred into the food web.
Jason Rigby (10:17):
and you don't want that.
Alexander McCaig (10:18):
Yes. Which goes to the fish and then goes to humans.
Jason Rigby (10:21):
Yeah. Here's the thing: the oceans can bounce back. We just need to help them and give them a leg up so that they can bounce back. We need to pay attention to how we are building and eroding our own top soil. That's getting leached into these waters and fertilizers and all that other stuff so that it has an opportunity to breathe for a second, if that makes any sense.
Alexander McCaig (10:43):
Yeah, there's already a three week delay. I want to make sure I tell the right ocean. The North Sea has a three week delay for phytoplankton growth.
Jason Rigby (10:52):
It's not good.
Alexander McCaig (10:52):
Yeah. They are still trying to figure out
Jason Rigby (10:55):
Imagine people not being able to eat for three weeks.
Alexander McCaig (10:58):
Yeah. That's what I'm saying. They are trying to figure out the environmental implications.
Jason Rigby (11:03):
I'll tell you what it is. If there's no food up there, fish go somewhere else. Okay. Then what happens with the North Sea fisheries? What are they going to do?
Alexander McCaig (11:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Jason Rigby (11:12):
You got nothing to fish. You got no people to feed. So if you block the sunlight, you can't feed your people, right? So what I'd be interested as the date of the people that live on the coast, businesses that are in coastal areas, what type of top soil erosion, or activities that are doing that are actually accruing to leaching within that water that could affect that general darkening area. So if I could inhibit those negatively oriented behaviors that are affecting the climate, then I could actually help preserve the phytoplankton. And then in turn, protect these fisheries that at the very end of this cycle of eating this food web, that actually have the quality of life to ingest this further into the future rather than cutting that off.
Alexander McCaig (11:51):
Well, I think this is cool.
Alexander McCaig (11:54):
This is so beautiful. This is why TARTLE exists. The last statement is this from the scientist: "More data is needed from around the world to really understand the breadth of the phenomenon." From around the world. More data is needed.
Jason Rigby (12:08):
Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (12:09):
there's a huge need for this data. And it's needed from every locale in every corner of the world. If TARTLE right now is in 175 countries, we all need to do what we can to help share in that information. People need that help. Be some sort of half-baked scientist, go collect some data for them. Look at a water sample. Do whatever you can but learn to share that.
Jason Rigby (12:32):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (12:33):
Okay. And there's a tool to be able to do so. And that's called tartle.co.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Thank you for listening to TARTLEcast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby. Where humanity steps into the future and the source data finds the path... the path. What's your data worth?
