Krill kick up a storm of ocean mixing.A single Pacific krill Pacific krill, Euphausia pacifica, is a euphausid that lives in the Pacific Ocean. Pacific krill is fished intensively in the waters around Japan, where it is called isada krill or tsunonashi okiami doesn't grow as big as its cocktail-shrimp cousins. Yet a swarm of krill krill: see crustacean. krill Any member of the crustacean suborder Euphausiacea, comprising shrimplike animals that live in the open sea. The name also refers to the genus Euphausia within the suborder and sometimes to a single species, E. superba. making its daily commute TO COMMUTE. To substitute one punishment in the place of another. For example, if a man be sentenced to be hung, the executive may, in some states, commute his punishment to that of imprisonment. in a Canadian inlet boosted water turbulence by factors ranging from 2,000 to 20,000. That's the result of the first measurement of a creature's contribution to the mixing of ocean waters, explains Eric Kunze of the University of Victoria in British Columbia British Columbia, province (2001 pop. 3,907,738), 366,255 sq mi (948,600 sq km), including 6,976 sq mi (18,068 sq km) of water surface, W Canada. Geography . He says that he hopes the finding will inspire other scientists to measure biological turbulence in addition to mixing from storms and tides. Turbulence drives many ocean events with global implications. For example, mixing affects gas exchange between the atmosphere and the water. In recent years, scientists have estimated how much ocean creatures might stir things up. After listening to a talk on such calculations, Kunze says, he and several colleagues realized they had equipment to measure that mixing. They made several sets of measurements in 2005 at Saanieh Inlet on the coast of Vancouver Island Vancouver Island (1991 pop. 579,921), 12,408 sq mi (32,137 sq km), SW British Columbia, Canada, in the Pacific Ocean; largest island off W North America. It is c.285 mi (460 km) long and c. . They had located a swarm of Pacific krill spending daylight hours some 100 meters down in the inlet. As the sun went down and light-dependent predators stopped hunting, the krill rushed to the inlet's surface to feed on plankton plankton: see marine biology. plankton Marine and freshwater organisms that, because they are unable to move or are too small or too weak to swim against water currents, exist in a drifting, floating state. . During the 10 or 15 minutes of the krill commute, the team's monitors picked up as much turbulence as that produced by a rushing tide. At dawn, the krill swam down, again stirring the water. These short frantic bursts raised the inlet's daily average for water mixing 100-fold, Kunze and his colleagues report in the Sept. 22 Science. |
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