Salp Poop Pellets: The Expressway to the Deep

Salps are constantly packing their stomachs as they swim through the water.  This means that they also need to poop a lot to get rid of everything they don’t digest and make room for more food.  Turns out that salps are known to produce GIANT poop pellets.  These poop pellets can sink very rapidly because they are so dense.  They form an ‘expressway to the deep ocean’ for carbon.  These poop pellets actually feed the animals that live down in the deep ocean!  You might not be a fan of poop on your dinner plate, but many animals eat poop from other animals, because what might not be useful to one animal can be useful to another.  In the deep ocean there is no sunlight, so there can be no plants.  In the deep animals must rely on a rain of food falling down from the surface.  Of course, miles beneath the surface lots of critters like to take a nibble on anything they can get.  Most of the food that starts to fall never makes it to the starving animals on the bottom ocean.  Instead it gets eaten by fish, plankton, or bacteria swimming in deep layers above the bottom. Because salp poop takes the expressway to the deep, it helps feed the deep-sea communities that sit hungrily waiting for their next meal to rain from above!