Krill kick up a storm of ocean mixing

A single Pacific krill doesn’t grow as big as its cocktail-shrimp cousins. Yet a swarm of krill making its daily commute in a Canadian inlet boosted water turbulence by factors ranging from 2,000 to 20,000.

That’s the result of the first measurement of a creature’s contribution to the mixing of ocean waters, explains Eric Kunze of the University of Victoria in British Columbia.