Question 1: Which producers are now more common in this ecosystem, the floating algae or the sea floor algae and plants and sea grass?
Question 2: From what you know about the relationship between high levels of nutrients and algae growth, why have the floating algae increased?
Question 3: What happened to the sea floor algae and plants? If fewer organisms are eating them, shouldn't their numbers have increased? Why are they rare now? Hint: Like all plants, what do the sea floor algae and plants need to grow? How do more floating algae limit the resource that plants need? Explain. Need Assignment Help?
Question 4: How does this food web connect to the present-day problem of high nutrient levels in the ocean? Use the food web to explain how harvesting oysters affected the levels of detritus and floating plankton.
Question 5: Based on your answer to question seventeen make a hypothesis for how catching oysters affects floating algae levels?
Question 6: What type of data would you need to collect in order to test your hypothesis? Hint: You would need to compare historic and present day data on two elements of the ocean. What are those elements?