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krill

krill

9 6.1
Small sea animals like tiny shrimp that whales and penguins eat
  • noun
  • /krɪl/
translation icon : kril
  • These phytoplankton then become food for countless microscopic grazers, including copepods and krill, which in turn feed a huge swath of marine life.
  • krill-eating fish

So if you are eating fish, fish krill and then like fish eggs, do you like sushi?

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Examples

  • Annual winter sea-ice cover has decreased over the last 50 years, and the regional warming has reduced krill abundance, altering the marine food web (Loeb et al. 1997, Smith et al. 1999).

    Academic text (2008)
  • The myriad uses for krill raise concerns that overharvesting will alter the Southern Ocean ecosystem.

    Academic text (2010)
  • What possible difference could one krill make?

  • There's plenty more krill in the sea!

  • And the biomass of all of these krill is estimated to be huge.

  • But there weren't enough fish, never enough krill.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • The echo sounder uses sonar to detect krill swarms in the water column.

    Blog text (34)
  • Great whales are major consumers of krill (Euphausia superba), which account for about half of the herbivorous zooplankton, by weight, in Antarctic waters.

    Academic text (1990)
  • To the untrained eye, larval cephalopods resemble alien heads, krill look like diminutive shrimp, and amphipods look like tiny pill bugs.

    Academic text (2011)
  • Blue whales feed on krill, small crustaceans that are found in large swarms.

Synonyms

Euphausiacea
vskrill
  • Specialized
9.9

Small sea animals like shrimp that often glow and form large groups eaten by many whales

is the common name focusing on being prey for larger marine animals

Surface Forms

krill singular
krills plural

Etymology

Krill comes from a Norwegian word krill meaning 'small fish' or 'young fish', a name sailors used for tiny shrimp-like sea animals. That's why krill means the very small, shrimp-like creatures that many large animals, like whales and penguins, eat.