[bright tone playing]
[soft music]
all: "Our World."
[laughter]
- Most of the Earth is covered with water,
about 71% of it,
and in that water are tiny but super important creatures
called phytoplankton.
They help create the air we breathe
and keep the ocean healthy.
To learn more about them, NASA sent
a special satellite called P-A-C-E,
PACE, into space.
But why does NASA want to study these tiny ocean creatures?
And what do they have to do with you?
Let's start with the science and learn more about plankton
from an oceanographer.
- Plankton are a group of living organisms
that live in the world's oceans and lakes and rivers,
any aquatic place where there's water.
However, we can split them
in phytoplankton and zooplankton.
Phytoplankton are teeny, tiny creatures
that live in the ocean.
They're like plants.
Like plants, they produce oxygen that we can breathe.
They produce sugars that feed
everything else in the ocean.
But they also help with
the carbon flow from the atmosphere
into the ocean.
Zooplankton, on the other side,
act a little bit more like animals.
So they're the ones that are going to come
and eat this phytoplankton.
- I wonder what role phytoplankton
and zooplankton play in the ocean's food web.
- Oceanic food webs are really complex,
and everything starts with phytoplankton.
Think of them as plants of the ocean.
And these phytoplankton are the primary producers
of the ocean.
And then you have consumers.
If it's a teeny, tiny phytoplankton,
it's going to be a teeny, tiny zooplankton
that it's going to come and eat it.
That's your first consumer.
And it can be a bigger one.
It can be a bigger one,
and it's going to get us
all the way to sharks
and dolphins and whales.
So what you have is this phytoplankton
bringing energy and all important things
to the whole oceanic food web and making it all flow.
- So in the ocean's food web,
phytoplankton are producers,
which are then eaten by primary consumers
like zooplankton,
which are then eaten by small fish,
and small fish by larger fish, and so on,
all the way to sharks and whales.
But how do oceanographers study phytoplankton in a lab?
[upbeat music]
- Phytoplankton have color
that we can see from space.
Sometimes we collect a little bit of ocean water,
and in our lab, look at it under a microscope
or try to differentiate
these different colors that they have.
But ultimately, we use that information
to be able to see them from space.
So my strongest tool that I have is space satellite
that allows me to see all the colors of the rainbow
and therefore say which phytoplankton
is where in the ocean.
- NASA scientists can study phytoplankton
using a variety of tools, including satellites.
But why do we study phytoplankton?
And do they have any other benefit to life on Earth
other than being in the food web?
- Phytoplankton, while they're teeny, tiny,
they are extremely important.
First half of the world's oxygen
is produced by phytoplankton.
The second thing is they're the base of the marine food web.
And ultimately, quite a lot of the food
that goes into fish sticks or sushi
or whatever you like to eat,
it's in your plate thanks to phytoplankton.
Ultimately, phytoplankton are really important
because they're part of the carbon cycle.
For example, water cycles through our environment.
It evaporates.
It goes to rain and goes down.
In the same way, many elements cycle through our Earth.
And the most important one is carbon.
Carbon is part of me.
Carbon is part of you.
You can find it in plants, animals, all the living--
all the living and some un-living parts of the Earth.
And phytoplankton plays a really important role
in making that cycle happen.
- NASA can see phytoplankton from space,
thanks to the PACE mission.
PACE is setting the pace for innovative technology
and engineering to monitor what's going on
in the Earth's oceans and study plankton.
- PACE mission is NASA's satellite
that allows us to see Earth in unprecedented way.
It studies plankton, aerosol, cloud, and ocean ecosystems.
So a PACE satellite looks like this.
This is a toy satellite,
and you have a body, solar panels.
But more important are the things that measure
things that we get data from.
This is the main instrument here
and two little instruments.
This main instrument is looking at the atmosphere
and the ocean.
And two little ones are really specialized
for different things in the atmosphere.
- From the perspective of a satellite
orbiting our world,
we can better understand
the interconnectedness of the Earth's oceans.
- We learned that world has many oceans,
and we call it Pacific Ocean,
Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean.
But all these oceans are actually one single ocean
because they're all interconnected.
They talk to each other, they flow,
and PACE helps us understand
the health of the world's ocean.
But also we know really well that the changes in the ocean
will affect changes in the atmosphere--
so whether, will it rain, will it be sunny?
And that ultimately affects also the land
where we grow our crops, where we get our food from.
So in the same way ocean is interconnected,
all the systems of the Earth are interconnected.
So understanding our ocean
allows us to understand our Earth better.
- It turns out these tiny ocean creatures
are a big deal.
Phytoplankton help create the air we breathe,
feed ocean animals, and even help scientists
understand the flow of carbon in Earth systems.
NASA's PACE mission helps us learn
how to keep everyone healthy in our world.
See you next time.
[light music]
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all: "Our World." [laughter]