krilln.

1907 J. G. Millais Newfoundland viii. 164 In June..whales suddenly become extremely scarce, owing..to the trend seawards of the stream of ‘kril’ or red shrimp, on which the great Balænoptera subsist.

1912 Rep. Brit. Assoc. Advancem. Sci. 178 A small red crustacean…forms the ‘krill’ of the whalers.

1923 Chambers's Jrnl. 111/2 The small crustaceans, called by the whalers ‘krill’, upon which the finner feeds.

1928 F. S. Russell & C. M. Yonge Seas v. 117 Euphausiids, or ‘krill’, as they are called by the Norwegians..are about an inch and a half in length, but are so abundant that they form a large part of the food of many of the northern fishes, and are the chief food of nearly all of the whalebone whales.

1931 Discovery 12 317/1 The catches of plankton show that the shrimp-like crustaceans, or ‘kril’, on which the whales feed are not..to be found only in local concentrations, but are spread over immense areas in the open ocean.

1959 A. Hardy Fish & Fisheries i. 10 The largest of these whales, the rorquals,..specialise in feeding upon the krill (euphausiacean shrimps) which, though large for plankton animals, are but an inch or so in length.

1970 Sci. Amer. Dec. 20/3 Perhaps a crop of suitably large zooplankton such as krill—the shrimplike animals that are the principal food of the baleen whales in the Antarctic—could be raised in a fertilized lagoon.