But the oceans are sexually dilute - mates can be difficult to find. But the oceans are full of fish and other nasty predators. Planktonic copepods must be able to meet all of these imperatives while swimming around in a transparent medium with no place to hide. Even swimming around in water isn't simple if you're a copepod. Catching food can be tough also.
Many copepods feed on the single-celled algae in the phytoplankton.
However, being hooked on novelty, we're going to introduce you to a new method - catching algal cells directly with the antenna . We'll deal with the other two in due course.