The salp population explodes into swarms of hundreds of millions of individuals, which can devour even huge phytoplankton blooms. Then the salps run out of food, millions of salps starve, and their population crashes back to normal levels.
The billions of bodies of salps and their fecal pellets carry enormous amounts of carbon to the sea floor. Scientists are trying to understand just how this affects the ocean’s carbon cycle and how this in turn could play a role in climate change.
So much to learn,the science is far from certain...
