This scientist takes a close look at plankton - small creatures of vast global importance
Richard Kirby, an English marine biologist, knows how to bait a hook to land his catch. Take a look at his new book, and you'll get the drift.
Most of "Ocean Drifters: A Secret World Beneath the Waves" (Firefly, $29.95) consists of his stunning photographs of mysterious, tiny and delicate creatures - and is clearly calculated to land on coffee tables.
Yet the introduction, summing-up chapter and the captions for the marvelous photos in between discuss in detail his field of study - plankton - and why their well-being is vital to our planet.
Kirby, 46, is a molecular biologist who holds a Royal Society Research Fellowship at the University of Plymouth, on Britain's southern coast. His academic path includes post-grad work at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and at its Belle W. Baruch Institute of Marine Science, near Georgetown, S.C.
In a recent interview, Kirby talked about his field, his book, and the path to both.
"'Plankton' is just a generalization given to animals that live near the surface of the sea. The name is derived from the Greek work 'planktos,' which means 'drifter' or 'wanderer' because they all drift at the mercy of ocean currents. Unlike fish, they can't swim against a current.
"They include hundreds of thousands of species - nobody knows how many for sure. There are creatures among them that we've seen, but don't know who they are or what function they fulfill in the ecosystem.
"Many of these animals occur throughout the seas of the world.
"How big are they? They range from phytoplankton, which are smaller than the diameter of a human hair, up to giant jellyfish, although the largest animal in the book ... which is probably 2 centimeters (0.79 inches). Most are smaller than a millimeter (0.04 inches) and most would fit quite happily on a pinhead.
"There is a huge diversity of life to be seen, far greater than on land."
"They underpin the food chain: Plankton are eaten by larger marine animals, eaten in turn by bigger creatures. Without plankton, there would be no fish, seals, polar bears, whales or seabirds.
"Plankton also play a central role in fighting the global carbon cycle, which humanity is currently influencing by burning fossil fuels. These fuels are actually created by plankton that over millions of years died, sank to the sea bottom, became incorporated into sediment, were heated and compressed to become oil and gas. What you're pumping into you car is processed plankton. When you burn fuel, you're returning to the atmosphere something that was removed from it hundreds of millions of years ago by the phytoplankton - tiny, plant-like cells at the base of the plankton food chain.
"And right now, we're unbalancing the Earth's natural carbon cycle by returning this carbon to the atmosphere.
"Humans have the ability to regulate our temperatures and the ability to engineer our environment: If it's too hot or too cold, we adjust our heating or air conditioning. Most creatures can't do that: They're cold-blooded and live where the temperature suits them. As temperature changes, marine creatures move somewhere more suitable.
"Living near the surface of the sea, plankton are very sensitive to changes in the sea surface temperature. We all know the atmosphere is warming due to the increase of carbon dioxide. With the sea surface warming, the abundance of plankton, and where they live, is changing.
"This has great potential ramifications for the food chain, and at the top of the chain are commercial fisheries."
"It's very difficult sometimes for scientists to engage the public: Lectures and graphs can be rather inaccessible.
"But the organisms I've spent the last years working on are rarely seen unless you have a microscope. And they're fascinating, beautiful, weird and wonderful. In terms of aesthetic beauty and human curiosity, photographs are a great way to engage people in what I do - to convey some aspects of the science relevant to these creatures and the way the natural world works.
"The pictures help convey a story about life on Earth that's rarely told."
"I've taken photos of things ever since I was maybe 16. It's just something I do.
"All those in the book are of plankton off the Plymouth coast. A research vessel uses use nets of fine mesh that have a pot at the end. The nets are lowered into the water, then towed horizontally or pulled up vertically to collect the tiny organisms. Water passes through the net and the plankton are washed into the pot at the end, called the 'cod end.' The collected plankton are then brought back to the lab where you can examine the contents under a microscope.
"It took a little bit of preparation for the ones shown in the book: We had to make sure the water was nice and crystal-clear.
"We used a technique called dark-field microscopy. A digital camera captured the images.
"All the photos were taken from live specimens. Because the plankton are alive, it can take 10 to 100 shots to get one good picture."
"I grew up about seven miles from the sea, in the (English) countryside. From a young age I got a great knowledge of wildlife. I was curious about the creatures around me.
"I went to Exeter University in Devon and graduated in zoology. I started my Ph.D. work in 1996 at University College in London, and by pure chance the topic was marine snails. But I could've gone into any field of biology.
"The turning point came after I finished and was introduced to a scientist in New York who'd seen some proposals I'd written for some science I wanted to conduct. He thought they were interesting and set it up for me to go to the Hopkins Marine Station, the marine laboratory of Stanford University in California.
"After two years there I went back to the U.K., to the University of Plymouth, for a year. I was then invited by marine biology professor Joe Quattro to spend time at the University of South Carolina, on a fellowship provided by the Baruch Institute. In Columbia I was looking at population biology, and studied the genetics of Atlantic tuna; I also spent time at the Baruch Institute with USC biology professors Thomas Hilbisch and Bob Feller.
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