This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In the deep sea, it never stops snowing. The type of snow that falls in the ocean, known as marine snow, is very different from the flaky geometric wonders that fall on land.
Marine snow describes tiny clumps of organic and inorganic detritus—think mucus, poop, silt, dead plankton, etc.—that rain from the shallows into the deep. As they sink from the surface to the seafloor, they take tons of carbon with them. Scientists estimate that marine snow transports more than 10 gigatons of carbon away from the surface every year.
However, only two gigatons are believed to sink deep enough to be stored for hundreds to thousands of years. Scientists have long wondered what factors limit this essential part of the carbon cycle. Scientists at the University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Lincoln recently discovered one cause of this discrepancy.
Their new study, published in Science, reveals that the viscosity—or gooeyness—of marine snow can have a major impact on how quickly it's broken down and how far it sinks, factors that influence how much carbon it transports to the deep ocean. They found that gooey marine snow can shuttle more than six times as much carbon to the deep ocean as less viscous particles. This is the first time scientists have studied live bacteria interacting with the physical structure of marine snow, or any mucus for that matter.
These types of interactions are critical, however, for maintaining the health of life on our planet, as coral reefs, kelp forests, land plant root systems and animal and human digestive tracts all rely on interactions between mucus and bacteria. The researchers behind the new study say their findings and new mucus imaging method will help scientists study how bacteria behave in mucus. This breakthrough in slimy science started in 2021 when Bryce Inman, a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Oceanography at the time, began searching for a way to visualize what he calls "the mucoscape." "Observing individual bacteria interacting with the physical structure of mucus had never been possible," said Inman.
So for four years, Inman and his colleagues, including Farooq Azam, a microbiologist and professor emeritus at Scripps, tried and failed to make it possible. It wasn't until 2025 that they finally found a way to make it work. Using a combination of 3D confocal microscopy and specialized fluorescent molecules, the researchers were able to map the "physical terrain" of individual clumps of marine snow and see how bacteria interacted with it.
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