Brine shrimp illuminated by an LED array swim upward in a water tank (4x speed) ISABEL HOUGHTON
Tiny shrimp and other zooplankton swimming in the ocean could play a major role in ocean mixing, according to researchers at Stanford University. The team reports that as large numbers of the creatures swim upward towards light during the day, they generate downward jets—a finding that suggests the animals could have substantial effects on the structure and composition of the world’s oceans. The results were published today (April 18) in Nature.
“Whether or not swarming adds up to genuine mixing has been the big question in this business for the past decade or so,” Nicholas Butterfield, a paleobiologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved with the work, tells Science. “This study makes a pretty good claim for nailing it.”
To simulate a ...
