Environment & Ecology, Lexile NC1160 

A teaspoon of sea water can hold a soupy serving of a million phytoplankton! These tiny floating plants come in thousands of amazing variations. Invisible to the naked eye, phytoplankton are the source of our atmosphere, our climate, our ocean food chain, much of our oil supply, and more. Theyre also food for zooplankton, tiny animals that often look like weird life forms from outer space. In this volume (another volume: Sea Soup: Zooplankton will be available in Fall 2000), Mary Cerullos text answers intriguing questions about these tiny drifters that have shaped our world, while Bill Curtsingers extraordinary photomicroscopy serves up tantalizing images of this sea soup. Many of the photos for this book were taken at Maines Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science and the Darling Marine Center, using an Axiophot 2 research microscope donated by Carl Zeiss, Inc. This book has an accompanying teacher's guide: Sea Soup Teachers Guide: Discovering the Watery World of Phytoplankton and Zooplankton AWARD -- Notable Books for Children, 1999 Smithsonian - from Amzon