I am a plankton scientist and I study an amazing world of life of striking beauty that is mostly too small to be seen by the naked eye. While often overlooked, the plankton affect every aspect of our lives. You can see how in this short film I created called Ocean Drifters, which is narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

In the sea, the plankton begin the marine food chain. Microscopic phytoplankton (tiny plant-like cells) use the sun’s energy to combine carbon dioxide and water to create sugar and oxygen; this is the process known as photosynthesis and it is the same process that land plants use to grow. The phytoplankton are the food of herbivorous zooplankton (animal plankton) in turn eaten by carnivorous zooplankton. Together all the plankton are the food for fish, which in turn are eaten by other sea creatures such as seabirds, sharks, and seals, in their turn eaten by larger predators like killer-whales and polar bears. The plankton are also the food source of some of the largest mammals on Earth, the baleen whales. Quite simply, without the plankton there would not be any fish in the sea for you, me or other creatures to eat.

The plankton do much more than just support the marine food web, however. The phytoplankton are also an important influence upon the Earth’s climate by consuming carbon dioxide. Over hundreds of millions of years, their dead remains that settled to the sea floor created our oil and gas reserves. Today we use this processed plankton for our transport, our clothes, and to fuel our agriculture.

So you see, the plankton influences our lives in ways that most of us have never imagined.

Their story and their striking images are revealed in my book.