Krill Food Chain Antarctica

A tiny cold water living crustacean krill isn t eaten by humans.

Krill food chain antarctica. Wind and solar powered ocean drones known as saildrones are attempting the first autonomous circumnavigation of antarctica. Antarctica is fascinating from an ecological point of view. This includes humpback whales that feed on krill at the end of their annual migration to the. Krill feed on microscopic phytoplankton phyto plant that are extremely abundant in antarctic waters due to the great upwellings of deep waters at the antarctic convergence.

So some of these are the phytoplankton that form the base of the antarctic food chain. It is fished in parts of antarctica s southern ocean to make nutritional supplements as well as pet livestock poultry and aquaculture feed. Despite the harshest environmental conditions on the surface of the planet well adapted organisms are able to survive here. Follow along in this multi part s.

Maybe 250 different species of these floating around the southern ocean photosynthesising and putting all that energy from sunlight into joining water and carbon dioxide together to make complex organic molecules and that is the start of the whole system. Krill a small shrimp is the basis of the antarctic food chain. But polar marine wildlife including penguins seals whales fish and birds also depend on krill as a major part of their diet. Discover who eats who is eating in the antarctic food web.

The ramifications will reverberate up the food chain with implications for other antarctic animals. These upwellings bring with them great amounts of dissolved nutrients especially nitrate and phosphate that fertilize the microscopic but hugely abundant phytoplankton in the same way that a farmer puts fertiliser on the fields. They occur in huge numbers in the seas of antarctica and understanding them is important for the future preservation of antarctic wildlife from fish to whales. There are only two krill aquariums in the world and one of those is a public aquarium in japan.

Many animals are a mixture of primary secondary tertiary 3rd and quaternary 4th consumers as they eat a variety of prey. In the antarctic food chain krill are primary consumers and baleen whales penguins seals and many kinds of fish and other birds are secondary consumers when feeding on krill.