Scientists had long assumed that jellyfish intentionally turn around because they dislike freshwater, or that the change in salt levels weakened the jellyfish or caused them to sink.
But, they have incidentally discovered that the physical act of swimming forces heavy saltwater up into the fresh layer, creating a heavy drag that anchors them in place.
As a jellyfish pulses its body to move upward, its swimming action inadvertently pushes some of the heavy, dense saltwater up into the lighter freshwater layer. This action creates a phenomenon called stratification drag.
Essentially, by trying to swim up, the jellyfish drags a small anchor of heavy saltwater along with it. This drastically cuts their buoyancy and robs them of their energy. The harder they swim, the more resistance they create against themselves.
“It is not the animals’ behaviour or physiology that holds them back, but the physics of the boundary layer,” explains Dr. Jan Bielecki, senior author of the study.
While the study focused on a small box jellyfish, the fluid dynamics at play affect everything that moves vertically through a stratified water column.
An estimated 10 billion tons of biomass undergo daily vertical migrations, driving the ocean’s biological carbon pump – a natural process that transports carbon from the surface to the deep ocean, helping regulate Earth’s climate.
As climate change warms ocean surfaces and increases freshwater input from melting ice, marine stratification is intensifying globally. Stronger density boundaries could mean that weaker swimmers, like larvae, small zooplankton, and jellyfish, may find themselves physically barred from upper ocean layers, a prospect that raises questions about long-term disruption to feeding cycles and marine food webs.
Unexpectedly, the discovery also has strong parallels in modern technology. Professor Hermann Kohlstedt, leader of the Nanoelectronics research group at Kiel, said that these natural fluid boundaries behave exactly like the interfaces in microchips that control the flow of electrons.
“What surprises me is that the same physical logic governing a transistor can dictate the vertical distribution of an entire animal population in the wild,’ said Kohlstedt.