Arctic Ice Loss Could Shorten Winter Feeding Time for Zooplankton

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https://eos.org/articles/arctic-ice-loss-could-shorten-winter-feeding-time-for-zooplankton

By Veronika Meduna, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Hauke ...Flores, a polar ecologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, has coauthored a study warning that ongoing ice loss in the Arctic could force copepods and other zooplankton to stay at depth for longer, cutting their winter feeding time by up to a month. The Arctic has been losing sea ice at a rate of almost 13% per decade since the start of satellite monitoring. As ice floes shrink and thin, more sunlight reaches deeper into the ocean. ...“Any negative repercussions for the zooplankton will have impacts on the whole food web because the zooplankton is the switch that transmits the carbon to higher predators,” he explained....

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