SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Big Storms Roil Even the Deep Ocean
from ScienceNOW
Sebastian the crab may have been wrong about the deep sea. In Disney's The Little
Mermaid, the orange crustacean famously touted the tranquility of life well below the waves,
singing "it's better down where it's wetter." But the ocean's depths can get stormy, too,
researchers say. New observations taken from a canyon in the Mediterranean Sea during an epic
storm reveal that surface weather can shake up even the bottom-most ocean habitats.
Of course, it was one big storm. The gale pounded the coast of northeast Spain on 26 December
2008, with winds hitting speeds of more than 70 kilometers per hour, while waves topped off over
10 meters high. In all, residents hadn't seen a tempest that fierce in at least 25 years.
And marine habitats took a beating, too. The storm, for instance, whipped up sand and silt
along shallow waters, burying many sea grass beds that are home to a range of fish,
invertebrates, and other organisms, and scouring countless others. Still, whether such a squall
could shake up marine communities in deeper water--such as in Blanes Canyon, which juts from the
Spanish coast and plumbs depths of up to 1500 meters--hadn't been clear.
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