  In marine plankton, many swimming species can perceive their environment with
flow sensors. Can they use this flow information to travel faster in
turbulence? To address this question, we consider plankters swimming at
constant speed, whose goal is to move upwards. We propose a robust analytical
behavior that allows plankters to choose a swimming direction according to the
local flow gradients. We show numerically that such plankters can "surf" on
turbulence and reach net vertical speeds up to twice their swimming speed. This
new physics-based model suggests that planktonic organisms can exploit
turbulence features for navigation.
