Among the crew members is Garen Baghdasarian, a professor of Marine Biology at Santa Monica College who's received a PhD in Biology studying coral bleaching who's collaborating with 5 Gyres carrying out a study to find out if there's a relationship between plastic pollution and the decrease in the levels of phytoplankton in the ocean. (treehugger.com)
A team of European doctors, botanists, and microbiologists spent many years and millions of dollars researching 40,000 species of marine phytoplankton in the ocean to determine the best species in each category to use for bio-fuel, aqua culture and ultimately human consumption. (cancertutor.com)
But nearly twice as much of the sunlight energy captured by phytoplankton in the ocean is released as heat than is used to make food, researchers report January 7 in Science. (sciencenews.org)