Final answer:
About 10 percent of the energy from one trophic level is transferred to the next in an open ocean food chain, while the remaining 90 percent is used or lost as heat.
Step-by-step explanation:
Typically, only about 10 percent of the energy in one trophic level of an open ocean food chain is transferred to the next trophic level. The remaining 90 percent is utilized by organisms within that trophic level for metabolic activities, which includes growth and repair, and is also lost as heat due to metabolism or as waste through incompletely digested food. In ecological terms, this concept is known as the trophic level transfer efficiency (TLTE), which can be calculated using the formula: (production at present trophic level / production at past trophic level) × 100. The efficiency of energy transfer not only influences the amount of available energy at subsequent levels but also determines the potential length of a food chain. As a result of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy, energy transfer is never 100% efficient, leading to fewer organisms and less biomass in higher trophic levels, which culminates in typically shorter food chains with rarely more than four or five trophic levels.