How did I get here. Well it is a stranger story than you might think. I came from a world of drifters , a place few humans have everseen . The world of plankton. I came from a batch of a million eggs and only a few of us survived. When I became a larva, I moved among other drifters. My Fellow plankton came in all sizes, from tiny algae and bacterin to animals longer than a blue whale. I shared my nursery with other embryos and juveniles, from clams and crabs to sea urchins and anemones. We drifting animals are called zooplankton. The most common animals here are copepods and krill. You could search the world over, but you’d never find a place more diverse than my childhood home. A teaspoon of seawater can contain more than a million living creatures. It can be a pretty tough existence, though. Trillions are born here, but only a few make it to adulthood. He may be no larger than a pin head, but this crab larva is an arrow worm’s worst nightmare. Epic battles between carnivores like these are just one way to get food. But the real powers of this place come from phytoplankton. Single-celled life that transforms sunlight and carbon dioxide into edible gold. Phytoplankton are the base for the largest food web in the world. During the night, many animals like me would rise up from the depths to feed on this sun-powered feast.