Gooier ocean snow buries six times more carbon in the deep sea — and scientists just learned why

Deep in the ocean it never stops snowing. 'Marine snow' is just a pretty name for the tiny drifting clumps of dead plankton, silt and sea slime that rain down from the surface — and they carry billions of tons of carbon with them. Now researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have figured out why some clumps sink deep enough to lock carbon away for centuries while others get munched on the way down: it comes down to gooeyness. Using a brand-new way of lighting up individual bacteria inside the slime, the team showed that bacteria can chew through thin, runny snow easily, but bounce off the gooier stuff — so the thickest clumps sink twice as deep and deliver more than six times as much carbon to the deep ocean. Published this week in the journal Science, the work also hands scientists a new window into how mucus and microbes interact — a dance that also matters for coral reefs, kelp forests and the human gut.