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SUMMARY:Krill swarms: the carbon export highway - S*£% matters! - Anna Be
 lcher - British Antarctic Survey
DTSTART:20191017T121000Z
DTEND:20191017T130000Z
UID:TALK132610@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:David Gershlick
DESCRIPTION:Ocean biology is key to the uptake of carbon dioxide from the 
 atmosphere\, driving a flux of sinking organic particles through the deep 
 ocean and ultimately to the sea bed. In fact\, atmospheric levels of carbo
 n dioxide would be 50% higher without the ocean carbon pump. Antarctic kri
 ll are a key part of Southern Ocean ecosystems and could act as a major hi
 ghway for the transfer of carbon to the deep ocean through their swarming 
 behaviour and bulk egestion of rapidly sinking faecal pellets. However\, t
 heir contribution is difficult to measure directly because of the patchy n
 ature of krill swarms\, and is likely not well represented in global bioge
 ochemical models. In this work\, we model the potential hidden flux of car
 bon originating from Antarctic krill. Our model results suggest that krill
  faecal pellets sinking to 100 m depth in the marginal ice zone of the Sou
 thern Ocean transports 39 million tonnes of carbon seasonally. This corres
 ponds to 17–61% (mean 35%) of current satellite-derived carbon export es
 timates for this zone. The magnitude of our conservatively estimated flux 
 highlights the important role of krill in carbon export and\, the need to 
 incorporate such processes more mechanistically to improve climate model p
 rojections.
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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