Brief Working Definitions
Ocean – most sources say an ocean is a large body of saltwater. I say an ocean is a large body of water between continents. Although we have given oceans different names, if we take a macroview of water on Earth, we can consider all the water on Earth as a big lake containing many islands. Desert – most sources say a desert is an arid environment with low precipitation. I say a desert is an environment that does not have one or more conditions necessary to support a large diversity of macroorganisms (visible to the naked human eye). Oases within these areas are exceptions. Deserts are places where the ecosystem is resting, healing, restoring and accumulating resources. Biomass - Biomass is organic material from plants and animals that contains stored energy from the sun. I say water is also bio. Water contains mass. Inorganic - does not contain carbon bonded with hydrogen. Inanimate, non-living. Organic - contains carbon bonded to hydrogen (hydrocarbons). Something has to catalyze and instruct the process to transform inorganic into organic. One of the places this process takes place is in water through the use of some source of energy. Then the so-called photosynthesizing primary producers, begin utilizing the inorganic compounds, water, chemical energy from the sun or other sources. Primary Producers are organisms that make their own food from sunlight and/or chemical energy from deep sea vents. They are the base of every food chain They are said to be responsible for all or most of the biomass on Earth. In the video above, in order to arrive at the statement “oceans are deserts,” another notion called average net primary production is used in addition to primary producers and primary production. Average net primary production is the rate at which the primary producers (plants and other photosynthsizers) produce useful chemicals (such as glucose or something) in an ecosystem). This is measured by how much mass of biologically useful material is created over a given area over a given time. The video goes on to say that this average net primary production is the most important figure to look at when assessing an ecosystem's productivity because it is the primary producers that everything else feeds on either directly or indirectly. The video goes on to say that all energy in the ecosystem is managed by these primary producers and so they determine how productive the rest of the ecosystem is. We are being told that we should judge oceans by the average net plant output in the ocean and then we should judge deserts by the comparison of average net primary production compared to coral reefs and rainforests, but we should not understand at all that both coral reefs and rainforests or any land area with plants that have a high average net primary production, can't do a damn thing without the water in that environment, of which the oceans are an essential part of the global water cycle. Primary producers can't do anything without raw materials that go beyond chemical energy as photons or other forms. Thus before primary producers as photosynthesizers can form the foundation of an ecosystem, they themselves must be synthesized from building block raw materials that form a more fundamental foundation in the ecosystem.Oceans are not only primary producers, they are primary suppliers to primary producers on land that use photosynthesis, thus oceans cannot be deserts unless you measure them in the wrong context of comparison. To claim primary producers are the basis of primary measure of value in an ecosystem before the raw materials that primary producers use is to say proteins are more important than amino acids and amino acids are more important than the elements and water is more important than hydrogen and oxygen. The ocean ecosystem is abundant enough with primary producers for that environment to produce an enormous diversity of life from micro-organisms to macro-organisms.
Clearly, primary producers on land are “dead in the water” so to speak, without consumers and primary decomposers who also convert energy to make raw materials once again available to plants, thus reforming and resupplying the foundation of the ecosystem. Producers - are organisms capable of creating simple carbohydrates such as glucose, from carbon dioxide. This process of producing organic molecules from inorganic carbon sources is called primary production. The energy for this process can come from solar radiation, chemical reactions or from the heat in deep ocean geothermal vents. On land, most producers are plants.
There are two major types of primary producers – phototrophs and chemotrophs. Both are autotrophs.
Phototrophs use the energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. The process by which this occurs is called photosynthesis. Later, the chemical bond energy in carbohydrates is released through respiration and used to fuel metabolic pathways. A similar process occurs in chemotrophs, except that the energy source is inorganic oxidation and reduction reactions. Chemotrophs are nearly always microscopic and are found in regions where water and light are scarce.
Global Primary Production Of Oceans
This is not talking about average net primary production, but I still say that the calculation of primary production, net and average must be difficult at best to calculate, especially for an entire group of organisms and entire ecosystems; therefore I place no trust in these types of measurements and can only lightly use statements relating to them. Oceans carry out about 50% of global primary production and support the greatest biodiversity on the planet. Although primary producers in the ocean are responsible for nearly half of the biospheric NPP (net primary production), they represent only 0.2% of global primary producer biomass. This uncoupling between NPP and biomass is a consequence of more than three orders of magnitude faster turnover time of plant organic matter in the oceans (avg. 2 to 6 days) than on land (average 19 years). Net Primary Production can be simply described as the difference between photosynthesis and the biosynthesis of organic compounds and biomass. Primary production via photosynthesis is a key process within the ecosystem, as the producers form the base of the entire food web, both on land and in the oceans. The oceans play a significant role in global carbon budgets via photosynthesis. Approximately half of all global net annual photosynthesis occurs in the oceans, with 10-15% of production occurring on the continental shelves alone. If life is based on water, and the oceans have water, but not enough primary production to not not be considered a desert, then what kind of logic is that? I will continue to repeat myself because you have to hit the nail on the head more than once to get it to sink all the way in to a piece of wood. If the ocean is desert due to the deeper portions of the ocean being cold and without light, then so also is all the deeper portions of Earth under dry land where oxygen is not sufficient to support root growth or other organisms, thus little to no life. Since the human body is not a primary producer, then humans must be deserts, if we keep following fragmented logic with broken logic with ill logic. Because coral reefs might be comparable to rainforests in terms of their relatively high output via photosynthesis, this does not mean the rest of the ocean is comparable to a desert. If the ocean is a desert due to its relative average net primary production, then so also are temperate areas to be considered deserts due to their relatively low annual output compared to tropic ecosystems. As another example, to suggest a measure based on energy production and organic biomass output as a determinant of a desert is to suggest that Mitochondria are the oasis, coral reef and rainforest equivalents in cells, and all else in the cell, including the watery ocean-like cytoplasm, must be a desert. Water (liquid matter) and dry land (solid matter) are formed from the same pool of elements. They need each other and cannot exist or function alone in order to create life, both are lifeless without the other. thus neither can claim greater relevance or productivity than the other because their functions are co-dependent. As another example to debunk the oceans are deserts foolishness.Sleep is a productive time of each day despite its reduced level of activity and seemingly reduced productivity. Thus so also are the ocean and dry land the yen and yang to each other. When water is bound up in more solid organisms, water is in a less active state even though it is being used in processes and being recycled. Likewise when land is in water, it is in a less active state, even though solid components are being used in processes and being recycled. Water incubates dry land and dry land incubates water. When water rises, it pull land up with it, and the other ways around. Be sure to understand that if there are variations of energy productivity on dry land, then certainly the same is true in oceans, thus there are deserts in oceans but oceans in general or overall are not deserts.
In other words, if on dry land deserts exist mainly due to insufficient water and/or heat, then in water environments deserts can exist due to insufficient solid nutrients and/or heat. Notwithstanding the above paragraph, oceans produce a whole lot of oxygen, a useful element, so for this reason alone, deserts are still very important to the global ecosystem, even when the desert exists in human logic..
