Thursday 15 August 2019

Blue sharks ride deep-swirling currents to the ocean's midwater at mealtime


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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