Marine Oil Snow Sedimentation and Flocculent Accumulation (MOSSFA) Events: Learning from the Past to Predict the Future

Abstract

Despite interest as early as in the 1880s, it was not until 1953 that Tokimi Tsujita (Seikai Fisheries Research Laboratory, Japan) was able to carefully collect and describe the matrix of microorganisms embedded in suspended organic matter (Tsujita, J Oceanogr Soc Jpn 8:1–14, 1953) that today we call marine snow. Subsequent studies reported that marine snow consisted of phytoplankton, small zooplankton, fecal material, and other particles (Nishizawa et al., Bull Fac Fish, Hokkaido Univ. 5:36–40, 1954). Across the ocean, Riley (Limnol Oceanogr 8:372–381, 1963) called this material “organic aggregates” which in addition to the organic material included nonliving material that was a “substrate for bacterial growth.” More than a decade later, Silver et al. (Science 201:371–373, 1978) quantified the abundance of marine snow, and its contribution to the total community in situ, and showed that marine snow particles were “metabolic hotspots,” with concentrations of microorganisms 3–4 orders of magnitude greater than those in the surrounding seawater. Alldredge and Cohen (Science 235:689–691, 1987) emphasized the importance of marine snow as unique chemical and physical microhabitats. The importance of transparent exopolymer particles (TEP), which form the matrix that embeds the individual component particles of marine snow, were described and quantified in the early 1990s (Alldredge et al., Deep-Sea Res I 40: 1131–1140, 1993; Passow and Alldredge, Mar Ecol Prog Ser 113:185–198, 1994; Passow et al., Deep-Sea Res Oceanogr Abstr 41:335–357, 1994).