VIMS professor Deborah Steinberg prepares to process a sample of salps collected during the 2018 EXPORTS expedition to the northeastern Pacific. Each salp is about the size of a kiwi fruit. \u00a9 Jason Graff\/Oregon State University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe team was interested in salps because they are able to reproduce asexually, being able to clone into immense blooms under the right conditions. The S. aspera is also bigger than most other zooplankton and can filter more water, producing larger and heavier faecal pellets. Thirdly, it migrates through the water each day, rising to feed on phytoplankton during the night, and sinking deeply during sunlit hours to avoid predators.<\/p>\n
These features led the researchers to believe that salps could play an important role in curbing carbon emissions, as carbon could be transported to depth through their heavy, fast-sinking faecal pellets, which are given a start on their journey due to the vertical migration patterns.<\/p>\n
Challenges to studying the role of salps in the biological pump<\/h3>\n However, the ephemeral life cycle and uneven distribution of salps have long created a barrier to studying their role in offsetting carbon emissions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSalps follow a \u2018bloom or bust\u2019 life cycle,\u201d said Steinberg, \u201cwith populations that are inherently patchy in space and time. That makes it hard to observe or model their contribution to the export of carbon to the deep sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team overcame the challenges by deploying a wide range of ocean-observation tools<\/h3>\n During the 2018 expedition, the team deployed a wide range of ocean-observation tools, such as traditional plankton nets, sediment traps, and underwater video recorders. To further study salps\u2019 role in offsetting carbon emissions, the team used two research vessels, the 277-ft Roger Revelle and the 238-ft Sally Ride, to observe conditions inside the salp bloom and surrounding waters. This provided a broader geographic context for their study.<\/p>\n
The results gathered by the team were clear. \u201cHigh salp abundances, combined with unique features of their ecology and physiology, lead to an outsized role in the biological pump,\u201d said Steinberg.<\/p>\n
The salp bloom observed by the team covered more than 4,000 square miles. With the experiments revealing that salps can export nine milligrams of carbon through each square metre at 100 metres below the bloom, the amount of carbon exported to the deep sea was around 100 metric tons per day. Comparatively, carbon emissions from a typical passenger car are around 4.6 metric tons per year.<\/p>\n
By looking at these values, it is evident that the carbon emissions removed each day of the bloom is equivalent to taking 7,500 cars off the road. Adjusting these values using the team\u2019s highest measured rate of salp-mediated export increases the carbon offset to more than 28,000 vehicles.<\/p>\n
The team is calling for increased recognition of the key role that salps play in global carbon export<\/h3>\n \u201cBlooms like the one we observed often go undetected,\u201d said Steinberg, \u201cand their contributions to the biological pump are rarely quantified, even in some of the best-studied regions of the world’s oceans.\u201d<\/p>\n
By incorporating salp dynamics into a recent carbon-cycle model, their potential to curb carbon emissions is highlighted. In this global model, salps and other tunicates exported 700 million metric \u00a0tonnes of carbon to the deep sea each year, equal to emissions from more than 150 million cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreater use of new technologies, such as adding video imaging systems to autonomous floats, would help detect these salp blooms,\u201d said Steinberg. \u201cOur study serves as a \u2018call to arms\u2019 to better detect and quantify these processes, using technology and sampling schemes that enable their inclusion in measurements and models of the biological carbon pump.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new study has revealed that jelly plankton blooms can offset as much carbon dioxide emitted by millions of car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":29581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24433],"tags":[700,3475,689],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Offsetting carbon emissions with salps<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n