Ocean Food Webs
Understand ocean food webs: multiple interconnected food chains where energy flows from phytoplankton (producers) through zooplankton, small fish, and large predators, and that removing one species affects the whole web
What a learner can do afterwards
- Distinguish a food web from a simple food chain
- Trace at least two paths of energy through an ocean food web
- Explain what could happen if one species in the web were removed
The lesson
You already know a food chain: one line where energy moves from one living thing to the next, like algae to a small fish to a big fish. In the real ocean, most animals eat more than one kind of food, and get eaten by more than one kind of animal. Connect all those chains together and you get a food web.
Mia looks at the same food web and finds a second path. This time, small fish get eaten by a shark instead of a tuna. Both paths start at the algae, but they end differently. That crossing is what makes it a web instead of a single chain.
If people catch too many small fish, tuna and sharks lose part of their food, and zooplankton have fewer hunters, so their numbers can grow too fast. Removing just one kind of animal can shift the whole web, not only its own chain.
A food web links many ocean food chains together, so changing one species can change the whole web.
Watch it
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.