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Published online 29 July 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.745
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Jellyfish help mix the world's oceans
Marine creatures could stir up seas as much as do winds and tides.
Small sea creatures such as jellyfish may contribute to ocean mixing by pulling water along as they swim, according to a new study. The collective movement of animals could generate stirring of the same order as winds and tides, the authors suggest.
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If Canadian overproduction and subsequent sterilization of the Grand Banks fishery has doomed Earth to Global Immolation, then Canada should be vigorously pursued for compensatory and treble punitive damages.
Every element in nature has a define role in maintaining nature alive.Some are known to us while other are not.So it's duty of world scientific bodies that we should move utmost attention.Nature biodiversity as in this case ocean biodiversity need to be protected above national body.As national boundary on ocean is steel not decided it's duty of all of us to protect ocean biodiversity in interest of planet earth. Anurag chaurasia, ICAR
I was taught that Jellyfish move with the current because they don't have the motive capacity to swim against it; if that were true (and most data agrees), then this study would implicate jellyfish in the strengthening of pre-existing currents rather than the generation of new currents. I can believe that a massive jellyfish school could exert a significant effect on local water mixing, but they probably aren't responsible for generating the major currents in the first place.
do moles generate plate tectonics?
fascinating research, how about cooling of water by "cooler" animals undergoing diel vertically migration? Although that is probably impossible to asses...
No wonder that Carl Wunsch of MIT expects a „formidable challenge“ to model the swimming animals affect on ocean mixing, and other mixing source would quickly come into focus as well, e.g. local and world wide shipping. The problem is that jellyfish, other ocean creatures, and shipping are already included in the average of weather and climate statistics. It would be difficulty to detect “noise�. But if jellyfish could be linked to ocean mixing why not such a sudden event as a brief but a devastating naval war. Only few month after World War II started in September 1939 Northern Europe was dragged into the coldest winter for 100 years and a global cooling started which lasted until the mid 1970s. From 1942 to 1945 the North Pacific and North Atlantic had been battle fields for naval warfare. A further significant climatic trend occurred in the Arctic at the end of the Great War in 1918. Suddenly the Arctic warmed up at Spitsbergen at 80 degrees North, which is connected with the naval battle field around Great Britain by the Norwegian and West Spitsbergen Current, carrying the sea water from Western Europe (Atlantic and North Sea) within a couple of weeks and months to Spitsbergen and the Arctic Basin.(See: http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/ ) An exceptional warming was observed since 1918 which lasted until the Second World War started. Could the jelly-fish thesis be used for better understanding of the impact of naval war, or vice versa?