Marine zooplankton detritus

In addition to the dissolved elements and compounds in the oceanic water column, a wide variety of water column chemicals are found in marine organisms and organic detritus. For example, a milliliter of surface seawater can contain on the order of 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 100,000 phytoplankton, and 10,000 zooplankton [9]. With the advent of soft ionization processes for mass spectrometry systems, scientists have been able to study these marine organisms at molecular level. The use of electrospray ionization (ESI see Section 2.1.15), atmospheric pressure chemical ionization... 

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