by Bran­don P. Kieft — The re­sources avail­able to ma­rine mi­crobes are patchy. Though sea­wa­ter looks uni­form and limpid to our eyes, that is far from the truth. Study­ing the oceans on a mi­croscale has re­vealed that it is highly het­ero­ge­neous, hav­ing fea­tures such as ma­rine snow and in­tri­cate chem­i­cal gra­di­ents. There­fore, mi­cro­bial cells in the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment cer­tainly do not all have a uni­form ex­pe­ri­ence. This is re­flected in their...