Satellites glimpse ultra-powerful “black hole” whirlpools in Atlantic

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. I strongly suspect that these do not transport anything 'down' at all

The paper is about two dimensional turbulence. The "1.3 million cubic metres of water per second" is "in a north-western direction", it says later in the Yahoo article, not 'down' (or 'up').

What they're saying is that you get a body of water that stays together, the whole thing moving coherently around the ocean, thus potentially transporting water of different temperature or salinity to another area. Anything floating that ends up in it will stay in it. This does not stop fish from swimming in and out of it, however, or ships traversing it. They'd just notice a current different to what they expected.