The Carbon Superhighway: The route from atmosphere to deep sea

Just as highways experience traffic on land, the ocean experiences its own daily commute. But instead of cars, this commute involves tiny aquatic plants-phytoplankton-that soak up carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, shielding us from the harmful impacts of climate change. And the data provided by Biogeochemical-Argo (BGC-Argo) floats gives us more insight into how this ocean “carbon superhighway” works.
The carbon superhighway, also known as the “biological pump”, is a process that transports carbon dioxide from the atmosphere down into the deep sea. Phytoplankton first take up carbon dioxide at the ocean’s surface into their bodies via photosynthesis, and then are eaten by tiny animals called zooplankton. The dead bodies and waste products of phytoplankton and zooplankton, as well as fragments of other dead organisms, all sink through the water column. As the particles fall, they are eaten up in the deep ocean and transformed into carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide gets trapped in the deep water layers, staying out of contact with the atmosphere for a few thousand years.
Understanding the carbon superhighway is important because the ocean is one of Earth’s biggest carbon dioxide storehouses, soaking up about 25% of the total human carbon emissions per year. This is due in no small part to the biological pump’s work in transporting atmospheric carbon dioxide to the deep ocean. However, as conditions in the ocean alter with climate change, responding shifts in plankton populations will influence just how effective the biological pump continues to be. The slower the carbon superhighway, the less carbon the ocean can store, and the faster our planet warms.
That’s why the real-time information collected by BGC-Argo floats is so important: by giving us a window into the carbon superhighway and other ocean processes, these floats are helping scientists to better understand and predict the impacts of climate change, to improve ocean health.
Learn more about Biogeochemical-Argo: biogeochemical-argo.org/
Learn more about the SOCCOM project: soccom.princeton.edu/
Learn more about the Global Ocean Biogeochemistry (GO-BGC) Array: www.go-bgc.org/
Video credits: SOCCOM, Ted Blanco
Animation credits: Frame 48, David Fierstein, Ted Blanco
Plankton photo credits: Colleen Durkin
Science Advisors: Mariana Bernardi Bif and Tanya Maurer
Producer/Writer: Heidi Cullen
Video Editor: Madeline Go
Additional Motion Graphics: Madeline Go
Voiceover: Madeline Go
SOCCOM is supported by the National Science Foundation Awards PLR 1425989 and OPP 1936222
GOB-BGC is Supported by the National Science Foundation Awards 1946578 and 2110258

[@victoriahann4222]

That would be so good to know data from BGC-Argo, and where the acidity is high in the ocean. This is an exposition very important, always interested in all about the 70% that give life to the rest!!!,,,Good concentration and hard efficient work there for everybody that is so appreciated & grateful, like is so fundamental to learn directly from scientists, thank you a lot for this topic MBARI!!!✌️🌊🌍🌎🌏🔬📚

[@boundsgreenboy8354]

Love what you guys do & appreciate it all as someone needs to keep us informed. Respect to all the Poo and it's workings.

[@susanne5803]

I wish I had a science teacher who would let my class adopt a float collecting this data!
"The students have the opportunity to give a soon-to-be-deployed float a name, and follow its progress to sea through blogs written by their paired SOCCOM scientists. Students can:
- Find their float on our adopted floats table
- Explore data collected via a special adopt-a-float version of SOCCOMViz
- Learn about everything from float technology to what you get to eat at sea in our SOCCOM FAQ"
(From the SOCCOM link you provide in the description of this video)

[@user-lj8rn4zt7k]

sounds like salvation. thanks for your work

[@ronaldvanheest3572]

Plastic has to interfere with this carbon cycle?

[@Cybernaut551]

"Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way."
- Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

[@9Sleepyhead5]

this video seems kind of weird to me. I see so many unanswered questions behind these processes. But they only describe what they observe. why should you be afraid that a system will change that you didn't even know about a few years ago?

[@VFella]

Well, usually it is a pretty bad thing to consider oneself as Measure for All Wisdom. As I studied the CO2 cicle already durting my student years... back in the 1990s.
What did not know was how much when or how much CO2 it sequestered and at which speed.
But people died equally of gunshots, even if before gunpowder was invented nobody knew about it.

[@lnheritance]

To use a mediocre analogy, a child cannot be certain they would die if they got hit by a car when they just learned about cars.
That doesn't mean a child should assume "I don't know everything, therefore I may not die, therefore I won't die" and stop looking both ways before crossing the road. This sounds stupid (because this is absolutely very bad reasoning), but it's what you're proposing.
Also, the whole point of science is answering questions. Invalidating this concern because "well they don't know everything" is what science deniers do - and if you care to look, you will see science deniers have been hilariously wrong (often to their own disadvantage) about a loooooot of things.

[@susanne5803]

At the beginning of all knowledge is observation. Systems have changed before and we humans didn't know why they changed. But we can act better if we understand a system because we observed it long enough to find patterns. It's okay to wonder what science is doing and it's good to ask questions.