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Global carbon-cycle on our planet ties together the living and the non-livingworld, coupling ecosystem function to our climate. Gravity driven downward fluxof carbon in our oceans in the form of marine snow, commonly referred to asbiological pump directly regulates our climate. Multi-scale nature of thisphenomena, biological complexity of the marine snow particles and lack ofdirect observations of sedimentation fundamentally limits a mechanisticunderstanding of this downward flux. The absence of a physics basedunderstanding of sedimentation of these multi-phase particles in a spatiallyand temporally heterogeneous ocean adds significant uncertainty in our carbonflux predictions. Using a newly invented scale-free vertical trackingmicroscopy, we measure for the first time, the microscopic sedimentation anddetailed fluid-structure dynamics of marine snow aggregates in field settings.The microscopically resolved in-situ PIV of large number of field-collectedmarine snow reveals a comet tail like flow morphology that is universal acrossa range of hydrodynamic fingerprints. Based on this dataset, we construct areduced order model of Stokesian sedimentation and viscoelastic distortions ofmucus to understand the sinking speeds and tail lengths of marine snow dressedin mucus. We find that the presence of these mucus-tails doubles the meanresidence time of marine snow in the upper ocean, reducing overall carbonsequestration due to microbial remineralization. We set forth a theoreticalframework within which to understand marine snow sinking flux, paving the waytowards a predictive understanding of this crucial transport phenomena in theopen ocean.

Hidden Comet-Tails of Marine Snow Impede Ocean-based Carbon Sequestration