AUGUST 7,
2019
When you're
hungry, wouldn't it be nice to just slip into a tunnel that rushes you off to a
grand buffet? It sounds like something Elon Musk might dream up, but it turns
out, certain species of sharks appear to have this luxury.
Last year,
researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Applied
Physics Lab at the University of Washington (UW) discovered that when white sharks are
ready to feast, they ride large, swirling ocean currents known
as eddies to fast-track their way to the ocean twilight zone—a layer of
the ocean between 200 and 1000 meters deep (656 to 3280 feet) containing the
largest fish biomass on Earth. Now, according to a new study
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists
are seeing a similar activity with blue sharks, which dive through these
natural, spinning tunnels at mealtime. The eddies draw warm water deep into the twilight zone where
temperatures are normally considerably colder, allowing blue sharks to forage
across areas of the open ocean that are often characterized by low prey
abundance in surface waters.
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