How ocean pressure squeezes a meal out of falling snow

The deep ocean squeezes falling dead algae like a giant juicer. Scientists in Denmark led by Peter Stief found this out. They placed sinking particles under high pressure in a lab. The pressure forced nutrients out of the particles. The particles lost half their carbon and over half their nitrogen. Bacteria in the water grew thirty times bigger in just two days. This means far less food reaches the seafloor than we thought. That changes how we understand the ocean's role in Earth's climate. The study was in Science Advances.

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