this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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It's more like 50-60% and it depends on who's doing the breathing - the vast majority of O2 generated by phytoplankton doesn't become atmospheric O2 - it stays in the ocean. So yeah, us terrestrials would see terrestrial 02 producers as our glam rock stars.
Wouldn't the ocean drain oxygen produced by trees if phytoplankton didn't exist? It seems to me that both move oxygen into the same system, earth.
If phytoplankton didn't exist, the things removing pure 02 from the ocean through respiration would die. In which case, the ocean would reach O2 solubility equilibrium at a fraction of a percent of atmospheric O2 and would stop uptaking it because there's nothing left to continue converting it to CO2.