Want to go deeper? NOAA, How much oxygen comes from the ocean? has the full story and the latest updates.
For Further InformationTiny ocean plants produce about half of Earth's oxygen, making phytoplankton one of the planet's most important natural systems.
Image: NASA.
Last reviewed: 2 sources cited
Tiny plant-like living things that drift in water and use sunlight to make food. They make much of the oxygen we breathe and feed ocean life. Glossary, drifting plants, algae and bacteria that photosynthesize near the ocean surface.
A natural system that turns sunlight and carbon dioxide into food and oxygen.
Every day; marine life uses about as much oxygen as phytoplankton produce.
The sunlit upper layer of every ocean; satellites like NASA's PACE track it from space.
Source: NOAA, How much oxygen comes from the ocean?
Source: NASA, PACE mission
Healthy oceans mean breathable air and a working food web.
Natural solution
About half of Earth's oxygen comes from the ocean, and most of it is made by phytoplankton, drifting plants and algae too small to see one by one. A single kind, Prochlorococcus, produces up to 20% of the oxygen in our whole biosphere. Keeping the ocean healthy keeps this oxygen engine running.
Source: NOAA, How much oxygen comes from the ocean?
For Further Information: NOAA, How much oxygen comes from the ocean?
About half of Earth's oxygen comes from the ocean, most of it made by tiny phytoplankton.
Want to go deeper? NOAA, How much oxygen comes from the ocean? has the full story and the latest updates.
For Further InformationMore solutions like this one, matched by meaning.
Sources are listed with each fact in the Five W's above.
APA
Saving Planets. (n.d.). Phytoplankton, the Ocean's Oxygen Engine. https://www.savingplanets.com/Phytoplankton.html
MLA
"Phytoplankton, the Ocean's Oxygen Engine." Saving Planets, https://www.savingplanets.com/Phytoplankton.html.
