According to the latest research, With the help of lasers, scientists have revealed that the movement of small “sea monkeys” can really create currents in the sea on a much bigger level.
A research performed by two researchers from the California Institute of Technology, Wilhelmus and Dabiri have exposed that the migration patterns of “sea monkeys” creates currents much larger than the sum of the currents generated by individual brine shrimp, on a level similar to the effects of the wind and water waves on ocean circulation movements.
In their normal environment, brine shrimp travel vertically in big groups, responding to changing light conditions: during the day, they move back deeper into the ocean, and at night, they move closer to the surface.
These two scientists held a test in their lab, to create their real migration in the wild, brine shrimp in the lab was made to move upwards in their water container by following the light from a laser, after that, researchers mixed in microscopic glass spheres coated in silver and high-speed cameras to check the changing water circulation caused by the brine shrimps’ movement.
This study recommends an extraordinary and previously unnoticed two-way coupling between the biology and the physics of the ocean and the organisms in the ocean appear to have the ability to influence their environment by their collective swimming, it will mean that the biomass in the ocean can reallocate heat, salinity and nutrients,” Dabiri added.
On the basis of results, researchers estimate that the migration patterns of tiny organisms in big groups in the water could give a trillion watts of power to the ocean.