What if the most important things happening in the ocean are the ones we cannot see?

Half of every breath you take comes from the ocean. But what happens inside that system — at a microscopic level — is almost entirely invisible to us.

This episode takes us to three places from everyday life: a kitchen and a concert hall. Each one is a window into a different invisible process happening right now in the ocean.

Doctor Christina Roggatz, researcher at the CONCENTRATE Collaborative Research Center at MARUM, studies the sugar molecules that algae produce during photosynthesis — and why bacteria don't always eat them. The answer to that question could reshape how we understand carbon storage in the deep ocean.

Doctor Luz María Mejía-Ramírez studies microscopic algae called coccolithophores — single-celled organisms that produce ...