These are planktonic bacteria from the saltmarsh water column. They are shown here as the tiny yellow-green rods and spheres, fluorochromed with acridine orange, and imaged with an epifluorescence microscope. The bright red-orange amorphous masses are the clay-organic flocs that are everpresent in Sapelo waters. Bacteria are present on decaying smooth-cordgrass blades, but, surprisingly, a substantial fraction of the epiphytic bacterial cells will emigrate or be shed from the leaf when dry leaves are submerged. There is enough shedding of bacteria that the shed cells can contribute substantially to the bacterioplankton under particular circumstances. One of the fates of saltmarsh bacterioplankters is to be eaten by molluscs, a parallelism to saltmarsh-fungal fates. The bacterial flow, though, is to mussels rather than to snails. See Newell SY, Palm LA. 1998. Internat Rev Hydrobiol 83:115-122; Newell SY, Krambeck C. 1995. J Exp Mar Biol Ecol 190:79-95; Newell SY, Fallon RD, Sherr BF, Sherr EB. 1988. Verh Int Ver Limnol 23:1839-1845.