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Updated: Sep 13, 2025

Unraveling the Unseen Players in the Ocean - A Field Guide to Water Chemistry and Marine Microbiology
Published on: November 5, 2014
Active Carbon Transport by Diel Vertical Migrating Zooplankton: Calculated and Modeled, but Never Measured
Daniel J Clements1, Karen Stamieszkin1, Daniele Bianchi2
1Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, East Boothbay, Maine, USA;
None:
Zooplankton diel vertical migration (DVM) is a globally ubiquitous phenomenon and a critical component of the ocean's biological pump. During DVM, zooplankton metabolism leads to carbon and nutrient export to mesopelagic depths, where carbon can be sequestered for decades to millennia, while also introducing labile, energy-rich food sources to midwater ecosystems. Three pervasive metabolic pathways allow zooplankton to sequester carbon: fecal pellet egestion, dissolved organic matter excretion, and respiration. Additionally, there are several less well-parameterized sources of DVM transport associated with growth, feeding, reproduction, and mortality. These processes are challenging to measure in situ and difficult to extrapolate from laboratory experiments, making them some of the most poorly constrained factors in assessments and models of the biological pump. In this review, we evaluate and compare observational and modeling approaches to estimate zooplankton DVM and the resulting active carbon flux, highlighting major discrepancies and proposing directions for future research.
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