Question

Open oceans are not a likely area for increased food production to provide for the world’s growing human population because

Select one: a. the lack of mineral nutrients limits productivity

b. marine waters are too cold to support algal production

c. the euphotic zone is not large enough

d. the trophic structure is inverted

Answer 1

Answer- d) the trophic structure is inverted.

Reason- The trophic structure of open ocean is inverted as the biomass of zooplankton is greater than producers i.e. phytoplanktons, the producer because they have low mass and small size. The level above the zooplanktons is occupied by the population of predatory fish which is larger.

The rate of biomass production is dependent on some factors like:- Plant species, Sunlight, carbon dioxide, nutrients , etc. As the open oceans have less biomass of phytoplanktons, thus they have low productivity which can't meet the increasing demands of humans.