This is our remotely operated vehicle Ventana going down in the water. In the past, many of you have probably been taught about food pyramids and food chains - the switch is then to start talking about webs because it is more complicated and interconnected than we had thought. In the mid water region it has to be a web, there is no doubt about it. This is what the marine environment looks like in the mid water. All these little particles are what we call marine snow.
Marine snow turns out to be one of the most important components of the mid water system.
Light comes off of these mirrors, bounce down, focus in the center, and if you zoom the camera in and you start moving forward, the light actually picks up, this marine snow picks up the reflective light and gives us an opportunity to actually quantify how much marine snow there is in the water column. Marine snow is a very rich source of nutrition. Here is one of the larvaceans . This is Bathycordaeus , one of the giant larvaceans, the largest larvacean in the world. Here is its head, here is its tail.