Not even the tiniest marine life cocooned on the ocean bed are unaffected by surface weather events.
Henry Ruhl, now at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, and colleagues spent 18 years monitoring creatures living on the seabed 4000 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. They found that two months after the start of a major weather event like El Niño, there was a fall in the supply of plankton and other food from the surface to creatures living on the ocean bed. Four months later, there were fewer small animals present. (Proceedings of the National…
