With the burgeoning whale populations how long before krill will be on the endangered list.

Increase in predation on krill will result in the unit krill being eaten and the fitter krill surviving. This will lead to a new super species of faster breeding krill.

party_pants said:

Increase in predation on krill will result in the unit krill being eaten and the fitter krill surviving. This will lead to a new super species of faster breeding krill.

I, for one, bow down to our new overlords.

Peak Warming Man said:

With the burgeoning whale populations how long before krill will be on the endangered list.

Well, with whale numbers increasing so quickly …

I’m starting to take an interest in small species other than krill that feed the food chain in vast numbers.
Possibly brine shrimp, other shrimp, crab, pteropod, what others?
Stretching the definition to single-celled animals, possibly diatom, coccolith, foraminifera, globigerina and radiolarian?

mollwollfumble said:

Possibly brine shrimp

Simpsons did it!

twenty years or so ago CSIRO were dumping Sulphate of Iron into the Antarctic waters and causing krill blooms.

Peak Warming Man said:

With the burgeoning whale populations how long before krill will be on the endangered list.

I believe the krill affected by ice sheets shedding , glaciers cracking and drifting into warmer waters more rapidly was a lynch pin to declines in krill levels globally. I read this about 10 years ago. I most do a search about this topic again. The rain seeding krill and photoplanktons were also on the Antarctica watch list as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_krill

Biomass and production
The biomass of Antarctic krill is estimated to be 125 to 725 million tonnes. The reason Antarctic krill are able to build up such a high biomass and production is that the waters around the icy Antarctic continent harbour one of the largest plankton assemblages in the world, possibly the largest. The ocean is filled with phytoplankton; as the water rises from the depths to the light-flooded surface, it brings nutrients from all of the world’s oceans back into the photic zone where they are once again available to living organisms.
Thus primary production—the conversion of sunlight into organic biomass, the foundation of the food chain—has an annual carbon fixation of 1–2 g/m2 in the open ocean. Close to the ice it can reach 30–50 g/m2. These values are not outstandingly high, compared to very productive areas like the North Sea or upwelling regions, but the area over which it takes place is enormous, even compared to other large primary producers such as rainforests. In addition, during the Austral summer there are many hours of daylight to fuel the process. All of these factors make the plankton and the krill a critical part of the planet’s ecocycle.
Decline with shrinking pack ice

Temperature and pack ice area over time, after data compiled by Loeb et al. 1997. The scale for the ice is inverted to demonstrate the correlation; the horizontal line is the freezing point—the oblique line the average of the temperature.
A possible decline in Antarctic krill biomass may have been caused by the reduction of the pack ice zone due to global warming. Antarctic krill, especially in the early stages of development, seem to need the pack ice structures in order to have a fair chance of survival. The pack ice provides natural cave-like features which the krill uses to evade their predators. In the years of low pack ice conditions the krill tend to give way to salps, a barrel-shaped free-floating filter feeder that also grazes on plankton.
Ocean acidification
Another challenge for Antarctic krill, as well as many calcifying organisms (corals, bivalve mussels, snails etc.), is the acidification of the oceans caused by increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Krill exoskeleton contains carbonate, which is susceptible to dissolution under low pH conditions. It has already been shown that increased carbon dioxide can disrupt the development of krill eggs and even prevent the juvenile krill from hatching, leading to future geographically widespread decreases in krill hatching success. The further effects of ocean acidification on the krill life cycle however remains unclear but scientists fear that it could significantly impact on its distribution, abundance and survival.
Fisheries
Main article: Krill fishery

Annual world catch of E. superba, compiled from FAO data.
The fishery of Antarctic krill is on the order of 100,000 tonnes per year. The major catching nations are South Korea, Norway, Japan and Poland. The products are used as animal food and fish bait. Krill fisheries are difficult to operate in two important respects. First, a krill net needs to have very fine meshes, producing a very high drag, which generates a bow wave that deflects the krill to the sides. Second, fine meshes tend to clog very fast.
Yet another problem is bringing the krill catch on board. When the full net is hauled out of the water, the organisms compress each other, resulting in great loss of the krill’s liquids. Experiments have been carried out to pump krill, while still in water, through a large tube on board. Special krill nets also are currently under development. The processing of the krill must be very rapid since the catch deteriorates within several hours. Its high protein and vitamin content makes krill quite suitable for both direct human consumption and the animal-feed industry.

Humorous

Witty Rejoinder said:

mollwollfumble said:

Possibly brine shrimp

Simpsons did it!

They did? What did they do?

I’m only going on the observation that by far the dominant lifeform near hot springs in the rift valleys of the mid ocean ridges are huge numbers of brine shrimps. Quite different from the lifeforms on the hotspots of the Galapagos rise with its tube worms.

sarahs mum said:

twenty years or so ago CSIRO were dumping Sulphate of Iron into the Antarctic waters and causing krill blooms.

As in https://blog.csiro.au/whales-krill-and-poo-power/ ? But that’s not quite the same. Ditto “https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/25660857.pdf”

Because of the sulphur, a necessary component of all life forms, or because of the iron, claimed to be linked to algal blooms? You need a control experiment, for example showing that nickel sulphate does not produce algal blooms.

The latter is claimed. “Iron is an essential trace metal for phytoplankton growth in the Southern Ocean. However it is a ‘limiting’ nutrient, which means there’s not very much of it available for growth, compared to other nutrients”. Generally when there’s a lot of iron around, you get a lot of large diatoms, which krill can feed on very efficiently.

… we hope to have a system to collect the mucus in a blow when a whale exhales, which will contain the whale’s DNA, as well as exhaled microbes and environmental contaminants.

“One theory is that whales can fertilise the ocean with iron, after consuming iron-rich krill and excreting the metal in their faeces. Whale faeces is also rich in other nutrients”.