"There are few contemporary reviews of whole-ocean neuston ecosystems. I started with smaller studies on specific animals and worked my way through their references. One reference, in Russian Cyrillic, came up again and again. This made sense. I knew the United States and the U.S.S.R. had both developed extensive oceanographic-research programs after World War II, but each region published in its own language, making overlap difficult. I sat with a librarian for nearly an hour, hunting this study down. Finally, we found it: a 1956 study published in the U.S.S.R., in Russian, by an oceanographer named A. I. Savilov. This led us to another study of his from 1968, mercifully translated into English. Savilov spent his career studying the neuston by conducting extensive surveys all across the Pacific and synthesizing this work into a map of the open-ocean surface ecosystems. Savilov described seven unique neuston meadows in the open ocean, each with its own unique composition of animals. Just as rainforests differ from temperate forests, these neustonic ecosystems are unique."

Rebecca HelmSee all quotes by Rebecca Helm →

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