You know when you’re horsing around at the beach and accidentally swallow a nasty gulp of salt water? Well we hate to break it to you but that foul taste wasn’t just salt. Photographer David Littschwager captured this amazing shot of a single drop of seawater magnified 25 times to reveal an entire ecosystem of crab larva, diatoms, bacteria, fish eggs, zooplankton, and even worms. Read more about what you probably don’t want to know at Dive Shield. We do admit the little crab larva in the lower right-hand corner is pretty darned cute. 

Prints of this photograph are available at Art.com.

Via JellyWatch, Littschwager offers a bit of clarification about the image:

Marine Microfauna – part of the contents of one dip of a hand net. The magnification was 2x life size, meaning that the actual frame size was a half inch high, so depending on how big the image is on your screen you can calculate the magnification as you see it. To keep as much focus as possible the sample is in as little water as possible just covering the bottom of a 60mm petri dish. That takes about 15 drops of water, but you are only seeing a very small portion of the total sample.

The slide was photographed aboard the NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette off Kona, September 20, 2006, and you can see a detailed listing of the wildlife on JellyWatch.

And don’t forget, if you’re looking for a piece of original art to hang on your walls, check out artFido HERE!