The Curious Life of Krill (Feb 2022)

[Rachel]

I did a series about Antarctica for my podcast in late 2020 and one thing that kept coming up was how important krill is in the food cycles of many Antarctica, and in ocean species more generally. And I realized I know next to nothing about krill! Are they some sort of tiny shrimp like thing? That's about all I know and even that has a question mark. SO that's why I picked this book! I'm excited to learn more about something is clearly super vital, yet tiny, and that I know almost nothing about.

[Rachel]

I give the book 4 stars! It was well organized into comprehensive sections and each section was very thorough. I learned a lot about krill biology, which is what I really wanted to know. The food webs are so complex and interesting, and astounding - it's boggling how much food (krill) a whale consumes per day! I was annoyed at humanity in the economy sections because it seems ridiculous to me to fish in the Southern Ocean and then turn around and use that catch as fertilizer or animal feed or bait. Ridiculous. And frustrating. The chapters about CCAMLR were interesting too because Antarctica oversight is so complex. I knew a lot of it from doing a podcast series about Antarctica but a refresher was good! And of course any ecology book has to consider the changing climate and impacts on the topic at hand. Which is always depressing and I wish we were moving faster at solving these problems. Changing oceans (temp, acidity, etc) will be an issue for a lot of species, including krill and the food webs they are the base of. What did y'all think?

[Michael]

Thanks Rachel! I find myself wanting to read most of the books on the list here, but now this one I really want to read. I have just returned to A World Without Ice (which I really like but keep getting off track with reading). 🙂