Environment

Sinking plankton poo could help store more carbon in the ocean

When the faecal matter produced by plankton sinks, it carries carbon from shallow waters to long-term storage deep in the ocean – now, researchers want to make the stuff sink faster

By James Dinneen

1 March 2024

Adult female Calanus with food in the gut — Calanus zooplankton will eat almost anything
Manasi Desai

We may be able to increase the amount of carbon locked away in the ocean depths by making zooplankton produce faecal pellets that sink faster – and new research suggests we could do it by supplementing the tiny animals’ diets with clay. “They eat about anything and everything,” says Manasi Desai at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

The uncomfortable reality of life on Earth after we breach 1.5°C

Photosynthetic plankton in the ocean take up tens of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the…

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Environment

Sinking plankton poo could help store more carbon in the ocean

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