Each year, the MacArthur Foundation announces its MacArthur Fellows or “Geniuses,” a class of researchers, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs and more who are changing the world through their endless creativity and groundbreaking contributions. And each year, Under the Radar with Callie Crossley highlights New England recipients of the award through its ongoing series “The Genius Next Door.” This is the second installment highlighting the Class of 2024.
Scientist and researcher Benjamin Van Mooy is working to answer some of the ocean’s greatest questions — one bucket at a time.
“In a gallon of seawater, there are almost as many plankton as there are people on Earth,” said Van Mooy, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod. “And if you just think about how many gallons of seawater there are in the ocean, it doesn’t take long to realize that there are countless plankton in the ocean. And so it’s important for us to study them and figure out what they’re doing, how they’re impacting the ocean, both in terms of the chemistry of the seawater, in terms of the organisms that live there, and also in understanding the role of the ocean in the Earth’s climate system.”
Although it may seem like biology at first, given his study of the microscopic sea organisms plankton and phytoplankton, Van Mooy says his and his team’s work is from a chemical perspective.
“We’re trying to understand what molecules they contain and then what those molecules are telling us about how they’re making a living in the ocean and what their role is in the broader ocean system,” he said.
One molecule in plankton that Van Mooy and his team have investigated are lipids — fat cells — and especially omega-3 fatty acids, which are “healthy fats” vital to human health found in foods like chia seeds, avocados and especially seafood, like salmon and mackerel.
“We regard omega-3 fatty acids as being essential components of our diets. And that’s true for all kinds of organisms, not just people,” Van Mooy said. “Omega-3 fatty acids are used by the phytoplankton; they’re the ones that make the omega-3 fatty acids. And the phytoplankton get eaten by zooplankton, which are plankton that are a little bit bigger. And then eventually those zooplankton get eaten by fish, and then those get eaten by larger fish, like the ones that we find on our dinner plate. And so the omega-3 fatty acids, for example, in salmon, most of those come from the base of the food web, which are those phytoplankton.”
In their study of the plankton and omega-3s, Van Mooy and his team discovered a relationship between the temperature of ocean waters and the development of omega-3s in the microscopic creatures.
“What we’ve done with our work is made that connection between the projected ocean warming and the likelihood that in a warmer ocean that there will be fewer of these essential omega-3 fatty acids,” Van Mooy said. “And I just want to qualify that a little bit by saying it’s just a prediction. Whether we should be sounding alarm bells, I think that’s going to be a case where we need a little bit more research to really understand what the potential outcomes are. And then, of course, if human beings make big steps to arrest the increase in global temperatures or to even take steps to lead to a cooling earth in the future, then we would expect that the distribution of omega-3 fatty acids would respond in lockstep to that.”
This work, along with discovering new techniques for studying plankton and his years of previous work around plankton, is why Van Mooy was named as a MacArthur Fellowship recipient in the class of 2024. And like most recipients, Van Mooy was both honored and surprised by the acknowledgement.
“We’re just doing our work, and we do it because we love it,” he said. “We’re really not thinking about external recognition. And so when something like this happens, it just kind of opens up your eyes a little bit. Just to have their recognition of the work was just really momentous.”
Guest
- Dr. Benjamin Van Mooy, chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, member of the 2024 MacArthur “Genius” Fellows
