This is the best song I have heard all year. (Thanks to i'm a chordata! for the shout out.) I might even go so far as to say it's the best song I will hear all year. What could possibly be more awesome than this beautiful, bluesy explanation of why animals in the ocean undertake vertical migrations?

This is the best song I have heard all year. (Thanks to i'm a chordata! for the shout out.) I might even go so far as to say it's the best song I will hear all year. What could possibly be more awesome than this beautiful, bluesy explanation of why animals in the ocean undertake vertical migrations?


It is okay for me to post this here, because squid are vertical migrators, too. They're just another step up the food chain from the phytoplankton and zooplankton Hannah is singing about.

A quick linguistic postscript (which I can assure you will not be nearly as entertaining as that song was): I knew someone once who had a pet peeve about "diurnal" versus "diel" migration. The two words do in fact have different meanings: diurnal refers to something that happens during the day, rather than during the night. It's the opposite of nocturnal. Diel refers to something that happens over a 24-hour period, including both day and night. It's a synonym for daily.

Therefore (goes the argument) the daily vertical migration of zooplankton (and other things) should be called diel migration. The problem is that there's already a large body of literature referring to it as diurnal migration. And though I am an English geek, it actually doesn't bother me! Because (goes another argument) the migration which is daily is also happening during the day, when these animals migrate from the surface down to depth.

So diel migration is also diurnal, and everyone is right.

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Danna Staaf

Cephalopods have been rocking my world since I was in grade school. I pursued them through a BA in marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by a PhD dissertation at Stanford on the reproduction and early life of Humboldt squid. After twenty-two years as a full-time student, I left academia to try my hand at freelance writing. I blog long, thoughtful essays (or equally long, incoherent rambling) at the Cephalopodiatrist. Here at Squid A Day I'm shooting for the opposite: daily sound bites of squid news. In the words of the Daily Illuminator, "Face it, however… Read more
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