A great article about the number two shark on the food chain. This shark is a fascinating creature. Read this to find out why!

Are there really ‘continents’, or massive floating garbage patches residing in the pacific ocean? Apparently, there are and these unsightly patches are reportedly killing marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain. One plastic patch is estimated to weigh over 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas!

In one of the few places on Earth where people can rarely be found, the human race has well and truly made its mark. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean lies a floating garbage patch twice the size of Britain. A place where the water is filled with six times as much plastic as plankton, a plastic-plankton soup that is entering the food chain.

For life in the oceans to flourish, microscopic plants called phytoplankton - the lowest rung on the food chain - need nutrients to thrive.

A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse.

Ocean Nourishment is the purposeful introduction of nutrients to the upper ocean to increase the marine food chain and to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (see Jones and Young). The marine food chain is based on photosynthesis by marine phytoplankton which combine carbon with inorganic nutrients to produce organic matter. The production of organic matter is limited in general by the availability of nutrients, most commonly nitrogen or iron. Numerous experiments (Coale et al) have been carried out demonstrating how iron fertilization can increase phytoplankton productivity in the high latitude waters. It is also effective in some lower latitudes (Markels and Barber). Nitogen appears to be the limiting nutrient in the rest of the ocean.Ocean Nourishment offers the prospect of both reducing the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases with the aim of avoiding rapid climate change and at the same time increasing the sustainable fish stocks. It promises to do this by increasing the ocean primary production.Ocean Nourishment promises to be a way of creating low cost protein in sufficient quantity to supply the needs of the additional two billion people expected to populate the earth before the population stabilizes at values near eight billion. While manipulation of the land ecosystem in support of agriculture for the benefit of humans has long been accepted it is a new concept to enhance the large scale ocean productivity and so creates some apprehension. See alsoCarbon dioxide sink