The University of New Hampshire, University of Maine, and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth – all NEC members – are teaming up with the Woods Holes Oceanographic Institution and the Bigelow Laboratory on a National Science Foundation (NSF) project. Researchers from the five New England institutions will use a $1.1 million grant from NSF to study plankton in Northeast oceans.
The three-year project will focus on a critical species of plankton in the Gulf of Maine. The species is essential to the ocean food web, as it is a primary food item for sea creatures ranging from herring to the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The researchers hope to learn more about factors controlling the abundance of these plankton and discover the effects ocean warming has on them.
“The expectation from statistical analysis is that this species may well disappear and that would have a pretty dramatic effect on the Gulf of Maine food web,” says project coordinator Jeffrey Runge of the University of Maine.
The New England Council congratulates its members for their work to learn more about our oceans.
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