DETROIT – While they only cover seven percent of the ocean, they are estimated to account for somewhere between 10 percent and 30 percent of the life at the bottom of the food web.
According to our new research, one byproduct of deep-sea wind farming is that the foundations of these floating turbines could help reverse the damaging effects of climate change on such seas.
In seasonally stratified seas, the water is completely mixed during winter, but separates into layers in the spring with warm sunlit water forming over the top of colder water below. The formation of this “stratification” during spring triggers a massive explosion of marine life as phytoplankton (microscopic algae) blooms in the warm surface waters, forming the base of a food chain that ultimately supports fish, seabirds, and whales.
However, the nutrients in the sunlit surface layer rapidly become exhausted by the plankton bloom. After this point, growth depends on nutrients stirred up from the deep water by turbulence associated with tides, winds, and waves.
This turbulence not only stirs nutrients up but also stirs oxygen down into the dark, deeper layers where dead plants and animals sink and rot. Since oxygen is needed for things to decay, this mixing helps this “marine snow” to rot, transforming it back into useful nutrients.
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