Years ago, Arthur C. Clark speculated that feeding humanity would be a lot easier-if we shortened the food chain.
Basically, the food we extract from the sea is the product of a very long food chain-we catch large fish. These fish are nourished by small fish, who eat smaller fish-eventually, the chain ends with plankton-microscopic plants and animals that are the basis for all the predators above them.
Clark proposed that plankton he harvested for direct human consumption. Has this ever been attampted?
As for plankton itself-is it stuff that is nutritious (but tastes awful)-sorta like marmite?
Yep!
Plankton isn’t a species. According to Wikipedia, it’s any drifting organism that inhabit the pelagic zone of oceans, seas, or bodies of fresh water. That is, plankton are defined by their ecological niche rather than phylogenetic or taxonomic classification. There are plankton that are plants, some that are animals, and some that are bacteria. Not all plankton are microscopic- jellyfish are plankton. There’s no reason to think that all plankton should taste the same.
People do eat jellyfish in Japan and China.
Microplankton has some components that might not be so good for you. It can include the kind of organisms that are responsible for red tides, which can be toxic to humans. Shellfish that are filter feeders (ie, eat microplankton) can accumulate some pretty nasty toxins, which you might be able to get direct from the plankton if you ate it. Bacteria such as Vibrio vulnificus and Vibrio cholerae sometimes live as plankton in coastal areas. If you were going to farm or harvest microplankton, you’d have to make sure there weren’t too many toxic species in the mix. How you’d do that is left as an exercise for the prospective plankton farmer.
Awesome username/thread content combo there.
From the article:
“[krill] must be peeled because their exoskeleton contains fluorides, which are toxic in high concentrations.”
How the fuck does one peel a krill? The article says they top out at around 2 cm long… 
Thor Heyerdahl and crew collected plankton on their Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947. (I just watched the DVD again last weekend.) They found the plankton they collected to be quite palatable, posessing flavours that changed depending on what orgamisms made up the plankton. If there were too many jellyfish, they would have to be scooped away.
I am not an expert, bt I would think Crabby Patties would be a better choice.
It was done on the Simpsons once. I think Homer had lost his job, so they could not afford the 99-cent store and had to buy food at the 33-cent store. All they had was canned plankton.
Water jets and rotating rubber bristles, I’d guess - it’s how prawns are peeled in bulk.
I saw a documentary about plankton cannery equipment once. It was also used in the processing of fish and sea greens, and placed the plankton in a deep freeze for later consumption. Since plankton is a high energy food, it would often have runners over for a meal.
There’s no need to peel them, the shell is very thin. Dried whole krill (and small shrimp) are commonly eaten in Asia.
Great Britain considered doing it during WW2.
It’s worth noting that the U.S. has banned krill fishing in the Pacific (U.S. waters) in deference to leaving plenty of food for whales, birds, and fish. Krill fishing is a hot-button issue in many international waters for the same reason (e.g. Antarctica, ref. “Happy Feet”).
I’m not aware of any large scale fishing for copepods or other wee beasties (krill is more or less as small as it goes cost-effectively) but I’d imagine it would have the same issues. Now jellyfish; they’re considered a competitor, not prey, for must things furry, feathery, or tasty. So catch as many of those as you can stomach (I’ve tried; I can’t; the Chinese apparently can).
This seems like something better done with a farm than by trying to round the little buggers up in the wild. Giant shallow tanks of seawater and whatever the beasties need, open to sunlight, which are periodically filtered for proteinaceous goodness.
I’d be eager to try out whatever food came from it. Should be very versatile, as far as what you could make from it.
Well, I suppose I could help, in the name of Science and all, but take small bites please…there’s not that much of me to go around…
I saw a documentary once about how in the overpopulated future, except for a very select and elite upper class, most of humanity would basically subsist on barely palatable plankton derived kibble-like wafers. Fortunately, one new and highly popular flavor in the lineup was much better tasting and protein/calorie rich than the other ones. There was some kind of dark secret about it though. The rich folks also had some really nice furniture. Does this ring a bell with anybody?
It’s all up to Hman. If he likes the taste of you.
Pretty sure that’s one of the main ingredients. it’s the real reason Mr. Krabbs won’t tell Plankton. Why else do we never see any other plankton around?
I’ve had tasted copepods before (* Eurytemora affinis*, most likely). Took about a tablespoon of them (in seawater) from the cod end of a MOCNESS. You’d really have to do something drastic to make them taste good (and it is VERY hard to offend my palate).
It would be very difficult to harvest anything smaller than krill (say 1-2 cm) from the wild commercially. Small mesh size nets produce a lot of drag, and have to be pulled very slowly to avoid blowing out the nets or crushing your sample (or harvest) in the cod end.
Part of the problem is that the trophic structure is quite different in the ocean than on land. If you look at the biomass of a square kilometer of forest, you’ll have several orders of magnitude more plant biomass than animal biomass (lots of trees and grasses, a few wolves and rabbits).
If you look at a cubic kilometer of open ocean, the trend is reversed. Phytoplankton (primary producers) will have a small biomass compared to zooplankton, which in turn will have less biomass than the nekton (fish). So while the production rates at the base of the oceanic food chain are very high, the biomass is very low, because it’s rapidly grazed and shunted to higher trophic levels.
What I’m saying is, it’s A LOT easier to catch 1000 tons of fish than it is to catch 1000 tons of micro- or mesozooplankton. Now if you were growing some sort of colonial macroalgae in a pond somewhere, that might be doable.
Now why do i know this? Well I have a niece. and I was trained in animation before. 
That was a plot point in one episode, Plankton and his army of relatives got a hold of the secret formula and found the ugly truth and fled in terror. It turns out it was not true that plankton was the main ingredient, Mr. Krabbs put a fake formula in his vault just in case Plankton got to it.