Jellyfish Swimming Is Mixing the Oceans 47
eviltangerine writes "A new article from LiveScience suggests that marine creatures, such as the jellyfish, may contribute as much to ocean mixing as wind and tides. Wired is also covering the story and includes a video of the jellyfish in action. From the article, 'The mere act of swimming implies that some water travels with the swimmer,' said CalTech engineer Kakani Katija, co-author of the study in Nature Wednesday. 'Drift applies to all animals, to anything with a body.' No word yet on when the jellyfish blender is to debut."
not too surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
The topic of ocean mixing is a huge subject [amazon.com], and seems to implicate just about everything you can think of: the atmosphere, geologic activity, emergent effects from complex system dynamics, boundary layers, energy dissipation, fluid turbulence, climate change, dissolved minerals, the rotation of the earth, gravitational effects of the moon, etc., etc. It's not particularly surprising to me that the actions of marine life are a significant component as well, though it's interesting to see actual numbers claiming to demonstrate it.