There are approximately 10 million viruses in every drop of surface seawater, but very few are infectious agents to larger animals like fish, whales, or humans.

Oh my. Mask up.   https://t.co/uR9OnqZbzC

— DCGreenZone1 (@DCGreenZone) August 21, 2022

Thanks to Futurity.org. 

"Although we can’t see them with our naked eye, marine microbes are the dominant life forms in our oceans,” says Rachel J. Parsons, first author and a microbial oceanographer with the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science. “They comprise 95 percent of the living biomass in the oceans—more than all the krill, fish, and whales put together.

“They grow at rates many times faster than larger animals. As a result of their sheer numbers, and the rates at which they grow, they are responsible for transforming and shaping the distribution of life’s essential elements—and they help control climate on our planet. Without marine microbes, life as we know it could not persist.”

There are approximately 10 million viruses in every drop of surface seawater, but very few are infectious agents to larger animals like fish, whales, or humans. That’s because almost all of the marine viruses are “phages”—viruses that specifically attack marine bacteria.  Marine phages cannot carry out cellular metabolism and must therefore rely on the metabolic machinery of their bacterioplankton hosts to replicate.