Isotope specialist from Kiel develops a method to identify
the origins of nutrients in marine food webs
Oceans cover nearly 75 percent of the earth's surface and
have always been an important source of food and resources. Yet overfishing,
pollution and mismanagement threaten marine ecosystems and thus one of the
earth’s most important sources. We can help to restore these ecosystems by
understanding how they work and what affects them. Marine ecosystems have a
multitude of organisms that depend on each other for food and nutrients.
Researchers know surprisingly little about where marine living animals get
their nutrients because the origins of nutrients used to be intractable once it
had been digested by the animal.