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"Stories from the Sea"
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"Fish Tale: My Secret Life as Plankton"
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How did I get here?
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Well, it's a stranger story than you might think.
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I came from a world of drifters,
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a place few humans have ever seen.
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The world of plankton.
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I came from a batch of a million eggs,
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and only a few of us survived.
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When I became a larva,
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I moved among other drifters.
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"Plankton comes from the Greek planktos for wandering"
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My fellow plankton came in all sizes,
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from tiny algae and bacteria
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to animals longer than a blue whale.
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I shared my nursery
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with other embryos and juveniles,
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from clams and crabs to sea urchins and anemones.
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(Plankton noise)
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We drifting animals are called zooplankton.
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The most common animals here
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are copepods and krill.
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You could search the world over,
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but you'd never find a place more diverse than my childhood home.
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A teaspoon of seawater
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can contain more than a million living creatures.
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It can be a pretty tough existence, though.
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Trillions are born here,
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but only a few make it to adulthood.
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He may be no larger than a pin head,
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but this crab larva is an arrow worm's worst nightmare.
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(Plankton noises)
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Epic battles between carnivores like these are just one way to get food.
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But the real powers of this place come from phytoplankton:
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single-celled life
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that transforms sunlight and carbon dioxide into
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Phytoplankton are the base for the largest food web in the world.
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During the night,
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many animals like me would rise up from the depths
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to feed on this sun-powered feast.
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(Plankton noises)
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I was part of the largest daily migration of life on Earth.
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I'd return to the darkness, where I'd join my bizarre companions.
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(Plankton noises)
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Cannibals, like this sea butterfly mollusk,
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that eats its next of kin.
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