Off Track: Saturday 1 October 2016 10:30AM (view full episode)
A third of the world’s oceans are anaemic, almost completely starved of iron. And where the ocean is has limited iron, it also has limited growth – it can be watery, blue-coloured desert.
For the tiny photosynthesising organisms that float in the worlds oceans, called phytoplankton, iron is imperative to the process of photosynthesis and growth.
As you would expect from photosynthesising organisms, they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, and Associate Professor Andrew Bowie says we have a great debt to phytoplankton because of it.
‘Approximately every second breath we take as humans is supplied by the marine plants in the ocean,’ says Bowie.
Listen to more of the ocean with Off Track – the story of Lynchpin’s ex Oceano Symphony
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Love song for a changing ocean
- Download Saturday 31 October 2015
- The story of the ocean, its life, its temperature, its depths and its acidification all wrought in notes on a stave. More