A component of "marine snow" was captured at 55 meters in Monterey Bay, California, by a light scattering optical device that also counts and estimates the size of individual particles contained in a cubic meter of water. The view includes individually settling fecal pellets as well as amorphous aggregates that look like white flakes, which are a half to several millimeters in diameter and often host a large number of fecal pellets. Zooplankton produce the weblike material that helps agglutinate particles to form aggregates.[back]
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