Increasing picocyanobacteria success in shelf waters contributes to long-term food web degradation.

Continental margins are disproportionally important for global primary production, fisheries and CO uptake. However, across the Northeast Atlantic shelves, there has been an ongoing summertime decline of key biota-large diatoms, dinoflagellates and copepods-that traditionally fuel higher tropic levels such as fish, sea birds and marine mammals. Here, we combine multiple time series with in situ process studies to link these declines to summer nutrient stress and increasing proportions of picophytoplankton that can comprise up to 90% of the combined pico- and nanophytoplankton biomass in coastal areas.