Plankton

Plankton are drifting organisms that inhabit the water column of oceans, seas, and bodies of fresh water.

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The name plankton is derived from the Greek term ????????, meaning "wanderer" or "drifter". While some forms of plankton are capable of independent movement and can swim up to several hundreds of metres vertically in a single day (a behavior called diel vertical migration), their horizontal position is primarily determined by currents in the body of water they inhabit. This is in contrast to nekton organisms that can swim against the ambient flow of the water environment and control their horizontal position (e.g. squid, fish, and marine mammals).

Water column: A water column is a conceptual column of water from surface to bottom sediments. This concept is used chiefly for environmental studies evaluating the stratification or mixing (e.g. by wind induced currents) of the thermal or chemically stratified layers in a lake, stream or ocean. Some of the comm...

Ocean: :For other uses see Ocean (disambiguation)...

Sea: A sea is a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, or a large, usually saline, lake that lacks a natural outlet such as the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee is a small freshwater lake without a natural outlet, but the term was applied to it anyway. The term is used col...