Foundation grantees at Ohio State University have established the important role of plankton networks in removing carbon from the atmosphere and depositing it deep in the ocean.

Marine Microbiology Initiative investigator Matthew Sullivan and colleagues conducted this work as part of the three-year Tara Oceans Expedition, in which a team of more than 200 experts took to the sea to catalog and better understand the unseen inhabitants of the ocean, from tiny animals to viruses and bacteria.

These findings are the latest in a series of studies from the project and recently appeared in the journal Nature.

"We're trying to understand, 'Does carbon in the surface ocean sink to the deep ocean and, if so, how?'" Sullivan said. "The oceans help mitigate our carbon footprint on this planet."

Read the full article here.