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Top Comments: Zooplankton Sequester Large Amounts of Carbon in the Southern Ocean [1]
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Date: 2025-06-29
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As Earth’s climate careens toward ever hotter temperatures, climate scientists need to make a full and accurate accounting of where human-generated carbon dioxide ends up. A recent accounting of the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown that the capacity for CO 2 of that body is much greater than was previously thought, and it’s due to the tiny zooplankton, and their migration patterns.
The conventional thought was that carbon absorption by the southern ocean was due to the sinking of the detritus of zooplankton feeding, just due to gravity. However, as the researchers learned, these zooplankton (in the form of copepods, krill, and salps) turn out to have a seasonal migration, thus carrying a significant amount of carbon with them, much more than was previously known.
This new research concerns another more recently described process called the "seasonal migrant pump." This process sees zooplankton migrate each year from surface waters to depths below 500m, storing carbon via their respiration and mortality during this deep overwintering phase. The team first built a big database of zooplankton collected in thousands of net hauls from around the Southern Ocean, dating from the 1920s to the present day. From these they quantified the extent of the zooplankton's annual descent to overwinter at great depths, where they respire CO2—directly and efficiently injecting carbon into the deep ocean. Their key findings, published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, reveal that 65 million tons of carbon are stored annually: The seasonal, vertical migration of zooplankton transports roughly 65 million tons of carbon to depths below 500 meters. Copepods dominate the seasonal migrant pump, accounting for 80% of this carbon flux, while krill and salps contribute 14% and 6%, respectively.
The Southern Ocean is said to absorb 40 % of human-generated CO 2 taken up by the oceans, but this accounting didn’t take the effect of zooplankton migration. Climate modelers need this information to be able to make accurate predictions for the future of the Earth’s climate. Further, with krill populations threatened by industrial fishing, this finding further emphasizes the importance of preserving the biodiversity of the Southern Ocean.
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