As much as we wish to wonder at the power and majesty of the ocean , we have to intromit that as beautiful as it is , it also stinks . It stinks because it ’s shot through with sulfur . And that sulfur has seen the insides of two different creatues before it get to your nose .
Our chronicle starts with a substance yell DMSP , which is a necessary abreviation of dimethylsulfoniopropionate . This substance consists of a prospicient string of carbon , atomic number 1 , and oxygen , with two sulfur atoms hurl in . It ’s made by phytoplankton , which utilise it as an internal workhorse . DMSP regulates osmosis inside the phytoplankton , shifting around liquids from place to post . Scientists guess it ’s also used as a kind of sunscreen , protecting the plankton from ultraviolet Christ Within .
Phytoplankton do n’t last long . If they do n’t get beached or eaten , they die of onetime years in a few days . Even before they die , they leak DMSP into the environment . After they ’re numb , their body divide open and split the chemisty of their guts everywhere .
That ’s when the bacterium go to work . bacterium chew their agency through the stagnant plankton , and when they get to DMSP , they insert in . rip off several of the strings of C , atomic number 8 , and hydrogen from the complicated speck , they eliminate a comparatively simple ( CH3)2S. This is dimethyl sulphide , and because it keep on one sulphur atom it is pungent . It ’s pungent enough to service as a signaling to predatory birds that there are a big density of plankton , and therefore a large assiduousness of fish , in the expanse . And it ’s pungent enough to dishonour your nose every single time you go to the ocean side . The particle that started off indoors of phytoplankton and wound its mode through the ( metaphoric ) backbone of bacterium , is now charge in your nostrils .
[ Source : Applied and Environmental Microbiology , Why Does the Sea Smell Like the Sea ? ]
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