Increased radiation and the affect on plankton, could a mass marine exodus occur in order to eat?

I just recently posted a thread: Florida kayaker has close encounter with enormous shark (rare shark sighting)

The shark that was sighted was a Basking Shark. It is a plankton eater and is normally found in the Arctic and temperate waters. I am going to go out on a limb here and ask what would the affect of all this increased radiation be on the plankton?

To the best of my knowledge plankton play a vital role in the food chain, I am quite curious if any studies have been done on plankton levels before and after the nuclear plant in Japan started having issues. It seems plausible that animals would in fact go to where the food was. Which could explain the unusual location of this rare sighting.

I think I will keep my eyes open for sightings of marine animals that are out of their normal element. Perhaps there is some credence to this, but let's hope not.

I saw an article on CNN a couple of days ago mentioning this... I'll try to find a link. It's very peculiar bet very cool! That shark is huge!

You have a very compelling question and would love to see more information as well! Does anyone know where one may be able to contact/research said info?

Most of the articles I have searched for discuss effects of increased UV radiation on plankton. I don't really see anything mentioning the effect increased levels of radiation (being churned in the Pacific diluted or not) will have on microscopic organisms.

The lay person wouldn't be able to spot a mass plankton die off (I wouldn't think) as easy as they would say a mass fish die off. So this raises the question, could we soon start seeing more and more out of place marine life? Should be something to watch for.

www.cnn.com...#/video/us/2011/03/24/kayaker.near.shark.WMBB?iref=allsearch

The clip will show after an ad

Any Marine Biology minors/majors/masters that are floating around on ATS that could perhaps educate us as to what the possible effect on plankton would be with increased radiation quantities?

I would be curious to know if plankton and micro-organisms are effected by higher than normal doses of radiation?

If they are and it is causing marine life to seek out more reliable food sources, to me, is somewhat troubling. Couldn't that effect the balance of certain ecosystems?

reply to post by UberL33t

Seawater contains naturally radioactive elements such as Uranium, the whole Uranium decay series, but also low concentrations of Fissogenic products (i.e. the same "waste products" you find in nucl. reactors, that includes of course radioactive Plutonium, Iodine, Cesium, Strontium etc.) but all that stuff naturally derived from cosmic-ray bombardment of Uranium in seawater. Furthermore, there is radioactive activated and spallation products from other, more stable elements, and pristine radioactive isotopes such as Potassium 40 (and many many more).

That means the natural marine environnment is per se radioactive and fertile/prone to continuosly trigger mutations of any lifeform swimming on it. This has always been the case, AB INITIO, and will stay so (with or without human activities), until to the dead of times.

My first guess is that viable mutations are arguably created at sea, more than in a nuclear reactor where I expect radiation is intense enough to kill off most life (but radiudurans type bacteria).

www.zimbio.co... m/Pandemic+Flu+or+H5N1+influenza/articles/pVIvcfU33JE/New+H5N1+Flu+pandemic+concerns+Fukushima+Radiation

For more info see this thread:

It gets worse in Japan: H5N1 pandemic now in Chiba City chickens

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Plankton relates to our survival and O2. If its gone it won't matter what comes out of the ocean looking for a meal. Land sharks won't matter.

reply to post by Unity_99


That's where I was ultimately going with this, unfortunately not much input has been supplied to the thread at this point.