Diatom

microscopic · ocean life · oxygen makers · silicon shells

Incredibly tiny algae. Diatoms are so small you need a microscope to see them, yet they live almost everywhere on Earth: in oceans, rivers, lakes, and even soil.

Earth's oxygen factories. Diatoms produce between 20 to 50 percent of all the oxygen we breathe each year, making them as important as rainforests for keeping our planet livable.

Built from glass-like shells. Each diatom has a beautiful shell made of silica, the same material that makes glass, and when diatoms die, their shells sink to the ocean floor and pile up like sand.

Feeding the whole ocean. Diatoms make up nearly half of all the organic food material in the oceans, so fish and whales depend on them to survive.

Desert dust travels far. Shells from diatoms that lived in lakes in Africa's Sahara Desert get blown by wind all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and fertilize the Amazon rainforest with 27 million tons of diatom dust every year.