Photographer captures the microscopic world of plankton in 'stunning'detail

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From brilliantly colored blobs to miniature monsters adorned with tentacles and gigantic eyes, every drop of H2O, be it freshwater or seawater, hums with microscopic life most of us have never seen.

For the past three years, Dutch filmmaker and photographer Jan Van IJken has made it his goal to illuminate the beauty of this unseen world.

Van IJken has traveled throughout the Netherlands, swishing his plankton-collecting net through various bodies of water and then using time-lapse photography or video to capture the tiny treasures on microscope slides.

“Plankton is so incredibly diverse and incredibly abundant,” says Van IJken. “Every time I throw my net, I can work for weeks on what I find.” 

Technically, any animal that is free-floating—and therefore can’t control its own trajectory—is considered plankton, which translates to “drifter” or “wanderer” in ancient Greek. That means plankton can be as small as a single-celled organism the size of a white blood cell or as big as a lion’s mane jellyfish, which can reach 120 feet in length. 

There’s a reason why plankton need some good PR: They’re crucial to the health of our ecosystems, experts say. Via photosynthesis, plankton churn out as much oxygen as all the plants on Earth combined.

“About 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe is produced by phytoplankton,” says Marianne Wootton, senior plankton analyst at the Marine Biological Association in the United Kingdom. “So, every other breath is a plankton breath.”

Source:  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/microscopic-plankton-revealed-in-stunning-detail

[Pennywise 36,080]

Such skinny legends.... 

[connorfilm 7,356]

Slay queens 

[RAMROD 117,034]

Wy is it not green and bean lyk? 👁️👄👁️

[Fresco 1,688]

Ok, I love that they make all that oxygen, and they look weird. 

[VTV 13,909]

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[Sneaky Oliver 22,974]

It’s honestly amazing how modern cameras can capture such small things! We’re able to see what many generations couldn’t! 

They look very alien-ish which’s funny because we don’t usually view those “deep oceans” creatures as common animals as they should 

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13 hours ago, VTV said:

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They're the Enigma ones

[Reginald 13,841]

Seeing how beautiful and intricate the microscopic world is always makes me wonder  if we're just a drop of water in someone else's ocean 

Turtles all the way down  

[Brolysskins 4,166]

1 hour ago, Reginald said:

Seeing how beautiful and intricate the microscopic world is always makes me wonder  if we're just a drop of water in someone else's ocean 

Turtles all the way down  

I've thought about this too! My mind goes x10000 when thinking of these things lol

[Economy 52,845]

Just think. Whenever u drink water there's microscopic stuff like that in it (even if it's dead cuz of water treatments)

 

I'm assuming freshwater has their own version of these microbes