But sometimes trillions of them will come together to form huge oceanic swarms, and that's when things get serious. See, thanks to the salps' ability to grow as much as 10 percent of their body length per hour, one of those clusters can reach 38,600 square miles. That's like 18,500,000 football fields, or just about the size of South Korea. Ordinarily, this would be the point we start panicking and advocate ill-advised but enthusiastic napalm deployment, but Salps do something pretty cool: They consume carbon dioxide.
The oceans actually absorb a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere, where it's eventually eaten by phytoplankton (organisms even tinier than salps) before being released back into the air when the animals die. Salps help with that by eating the phytoplankton themselves, and pooping out the CO2 in pellets that sink to the bottom, where the gas can't warm up the planet and or/be dismissed as a liberal conspiracy.
Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife
"When's the last time your poop caused anything but tears and despair?"
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