By Susan Milius
A single Pacific krill doesn’t grow as big as its cocktail-shrimp cousins. Yet a swarm of krill making its daily commute 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. He says that he hopes the finding will inspire other scientists to measure biological turbulence in addition to mixing from storms and tides.