Student Independent Projects Sustainable Resource Management 2015: The effects of oil spills on zooplankton population on West Coast of Newfoundland

• Main Author: Gadoua, Tara
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland 2015
• Subjects: Newfoundland; Copepods
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/11821/; https://research.library.mun.ca/11821/1/Tara_Gadoua.pdf

Zooplankton are incredibly important for marine ecosystem as they play a pivotal role in marine food web dynamics. (Almeda 201). Zooplankton are not a single type of organism, but rather refers to organisms that ‘drift’ in the ocean, comprised of invertebrates and fish larvae. For these organisms, size is no indication of value, as they are at the foundation of the marine food web, and an important source of protein in the ocean. According to Banse (1995), ‘zooplankton play a key role in marine pelagic ecosystems as grazers on phytoplankton and microzooplankton, exporters of carbon and nutrients from surface waters, and vectors for carbon and toxins to higher trophic levels’. Zooplankton are incredibly important in marine pelagic ecosystems (Cohen et al. 2014). There are micro-& meso-zooplankton (depend on size), and they do a number of things. Zooplankton will graze on the phytoplankton and smaller zooplankton, making these available for higher trophic levels. While all zooplankton are important, I will be focusing on type of mesozooplankton called ‘copepods’. These are often dominant in zooplankton food web, and are key sources of energy for other organisms. Furthermore, there have been many studies performed on this group of organisms, particularly in terms of what effects oil spills might have on them. Copepods are a dominant group of mesozooplankton that form calcium carbonate shells. The effects of oil spills on copepods are not taken into account in environmental assessments. However, as will be demonstrated, impacts on these copepods could have farreaching effects in the ecosystem, some that cannot be predicted. There is limited information available on this subject. Because they are so small and numerous, impacts on them are expected to be negligible. But this might be a false assumption, and could prove to be dangerous since effects on zooplankton could have an impact on the higher trophic levels that feed on it. For instance, there many organisms that feed on zooplankton, such as cod, particularly ...