What’s the age of Krill?

Aus­tra­li­an rese­ar­chers report in the jour­nal PLOS ONE, that they were able to deter­mi­ne the exact age of Krill for the first time. As known from lobsters and crabs, the age of Ant­ar­c­tic krill can now also be deter­mi­ned by the bright and dark rings of their eye stalks. So far, krill that were older than two years could not lon­ger be deter­mi­ned by their size, sin­ce envi­ron­men­tal con­di­ti­ons and food sup­p­ly were respon­si­ble for their growth or even shrin­king. If it is pos­si­ble to deter­mi­ne the age groups of swarms of krill the CCAMLR (Con­ven­ti­on for the Con­ser­va­ti­on of Ant­ar­c­tic Mari­ne Living) would be able to deter­mi­ne catch limits more pre­ci­ce­ly. Sin­ce the sci­en­tists can use the same method to age deter­mi­ne krill in sci­en­ti­fic coll­ec­tions and muse­ums, they soon will be able to compa­re the age com­po­si­ti­on of past and pre­sent krill swarms.

Samples of the stu­dy yiel­ded ages bet­ween one and five years, but the main point of the stu­dy was to estab­lish the tech­ni­que and not to actual­ly descri­be the age of krill.