"If you were to take a teaspoon of water from the ocean and look at it under a
microscope, you would see many shapes -- possibly millions, mostly translucent
-- of varying sizes and colours. Little spheres, tubular bodies with drooping
tendrils, circles within squares, squares within circles; triangles, rectangles;
spiralling helixes, some bristly, some hooked, some frilled; oval wreaths,
concertinas, braided zigzags; antennae emerging from cone-shaped bodies;
umbrellas, crossbows, sickles, bells, fans; barrels trailing thin, wispy veils
behind them; hexagonal prisms like jewels; darting arrows and little suns. You
could be forgiven for thinking that instead of a microscope, you were looking
through a telescope, and instead of water, you were gazing into the sky - at
galaxies, spaceships and planets with alien creatures - yet plankton are very
much a part of this world. We depend on them.We depend on them."
The following is an excerpt from The Book of Vanishing Species: Illustrated
Lives by Beatrice Forshall...
