marine snow

British

noun

small particles of organic biogenic marine sediment, including the remains of organisms, faecal matter, and the shells of planktonic oganisms, that slowly drift down to the sea floor

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The craft's lights offered the only illumination, revealing drifts of "marine snow" -- a shower of debris, including decomposing animals, that falls continuously into the depths and creates the impression of an old television stuck between stations.

From Barron's

Well, due to gravity, we get what Crichton calls marine snow — the continuous shower of organic matter made up of everything from dead plankton to fecal pellets, that falls from the upper ocean to deeper waters.

From Salon

And that marine snow becomes food for the creatures of the deep.

From Salon

It was hunting for marine snow - “poo, basically” in the words of one researcher.

From BBC

Those particles - the marine snow - sink to the ocean floor.

From BBC

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023