Sentences with phrase «fecal pellets sink»

In previous work, Madin and WHOI biologist Richard Harbison found that salp fecal pellets sink as much as 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) a day.

Both the discarded houses and fecal pellets sink to the sea floor, but may be eaten by other animals on the way down (Science Advances, doi.org/cbxw).

Both the discarded houses and fecal pellets sink to the sea floor, but may be eaten by other animals on the way down.

Not exact matches

Fecal pellets that contain buoyant plastic sink more slowly and are thus more likely to be eaten, says Matthew Cole of the University of Exeter, UK.

Their main source of food is «marine snow» — a slow drift of mucus, fecal pellets, and body parts — that sinks down from the surface waters.

The scientists estimated that the swarm consumed up to 74 percent of microscopic carbon - containing plants from the surface water per day, and their sinking fecal pellets transported up to 4,000 tons of carbon a day to deep water.

Lacking natural predators, salps can often be found clustering in huge swarms, sometimes numbering in the billions, and eating every microscopic organism in their path — producing huge quantities of waste, in the form of large, fast - sinking fecal «pellets,» which are transported (and sequestered) to the deep sea.