Marine Atlas: Maximizing Benefits for Tonga

THE DOSE MAKES THE POISON: PHOSPHATE AND NITRATE CONCENTRATION While nutrients including phosphate and nitrate provide much-needed nutrients for the marine food chain, too much from agricultural run-off and other sources negatively affect Tonga’s coastal ecosystems.

and soaps and detergents. This is where the dose makes the poison: while phosphate and nitrate are important nutrients, too much of them can be bad for marine and coastal ecosystems. In Tonga’s waters, there is certainly no shortage of sun, and thus photosynthetically available radia- tion, but there is a general limit of phosphate and nitrate. Once these nutrients are added from the land-based activities such as farming and waste- water treatment, primary productivity increases dramatically. The impact of too many nutrients (eutrophication) is especially significant in coastal waters, where increased nutrients can result in algal blooms. These blooms can affect coastal habitats such as coral reefs by smothering, in the case of macro-algae, or limiting light availability, which can lead to rapid declines in reef biodiver- sity (Fabricius, 2005).

On a global scale, Tonga’s waters have a moder- ately low phosphate concentration, ranging from 0.13 to 0.24 umol/L. Higher concentrations of phosphate are observed in the northern waters and gradually decrease to the south. Moreover, nitrate concentrations in seawater are generally low, with the highest concentrations found in high latitudes and some areas of coastal upwelling. Within Tonga’s waters, the nitrate concentration ranges from 1.1 to 1.5 mmol m-3, with the highest con- centrations in the south-west, but the South-West Tropical Pacific (SWTP) is generally considered a nitrogen-limited area. Phosphate and nitrate concentrations are higher in the waters close to the main islands due to land and coastal inputs, which can include inorganic fertiliz- ers, wastewater treatment from municipal sources,

Seafood “All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison”, stated the Swiss physician Para- celsus 500 years ago. And indeed, the dose makes the poison. We need to eat food, but too much food is evidently bad for us. Marine organisms need food and nutrients as well. Phosphate (see map) is one of the important nutrients that supports biological activity and is important for the growth of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which form the basis of many marine food chains (see also chapter “Soak up the sun”). Another food source is nitrogen (see map), which is present in the marine environment in various forms, with nitrate being the princi- pal form used by organisms. Phytoplankton productivity at the surface of the ocean is often limited by the amount of available fixed inorganic nitrogen (Falkowski et al., 2009). However, where there is too much of these nutrients, algal blooms can occur, which can have negative impacts on the environment.

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PHOSPHATE CONCENTRATION (umol/L) 0.25

0.12

75 150 km

Sources : Becker et al, 2009; Claus et al, 2016; Smith and Sandwell 1997; Tyberghein et al, 2011. Copyright © MACBIO Map produced by GRID-Arendal

As the chapters “Plastic oceans”, as well as the graphic, show, excess nutrients are only one type

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THREATS MAXIMIZING BENEFITS FOR TONGA

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