Polar Newsletter Part 9: The Soup that Feeds the World

The smallest marine life in the Polar ice biome is very important to the entire life cycle. Plankton is the foundation for the food chain. They drift in the sea currents. There are two types of plankton, phytoplankton and zooplankton. Phytoplankton is plant based and zooplankton is animal based. Crustaceans and other fish larvae are a part of zooplankton.

Here are some interesting facts about zooplankton:

• Antarctic krill can be as large as 6 centimeters or 2 inches long.
• Antarctic krill can live up to 10 years.
• Krill are small-shrimp like crustaceans.
• Amphipods and Copepods are minute crustaceans.
• Fish and eel larvae are a part of the zoo plankton mass.
• Krill is the largest biomass in the Antarctic.
• Copepods are the largest biomass in the Arctic.

Here are some Zooplankton reading cards

Newsletters about the Ocean Food Chain

and Ocean Carbon Cycle

Previoius newsletter. Penguin Nomenclature Cards

 

Credits

• Printout licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
•  Herring (fish) larvae by wikimedia commons.
• Eel larvae by wikimedia commons.
• Amphipod by wikimedia commons.
• Copepod by wikimedia commons.
• Krill by wikimedia commons.
• Tomopteris by wikimedia commons.
• Siphonophora by wikimedia commons.
• Microzooplankton by wikimedia commons.

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