Marine viruses are recognized as a major driving force regulating phytoplankton community composition and nutrient cycling in the oceans [1, 2]. Yet, little is known about mech-anisms that influence viral dispersal in aquatic systems, other than physical processes, and that lead to the rapid demise of large-scale algal blooms in the oceans [3, 4]. Here, we show that copepods, abundant migrating crusta-ceans that graze on phytoplankton [5, 6], as well as other zooplankton can accumulate and mediate the transmission of viruses infecting Emiliania huxleyi, a bloom-forming coc-colithophore that plays an important role in the carbon cycle [7, 8]. We detected by PCR that >80% of copepods collected during a North Atlantic E. huxleyi bloom carried E. huxleyi virus (EhV) DNA. We demonstrated by isolating a new in-fectious EhV strain from a copepod microbiome that these viruses are infectious. We further showed that EhVs can accumulate in high titers within zooplankton guts during feeding or can be adsorbed to their surface. Subsequently, EhV can be dispersed by detachment or via viral-dense fecal pellets over a period of 1 day postfeeding on EhV-infected algal cells, readily infecting new host populations. Intrigu-ingly, the passage through zooplankton guts prolonged EhV's half-life of infectivity by 35%, relative to free virions in seawater, potentially enhancing viral transmission. We propose that zooplankton, swimming through topographi-cally adjacent phytoplankton micropatches and migrating daily over large areas across physically separated water masses [9–11], can serve as viral vectors, boosting host-vi-rus contact rates and potentially accelerating the demise of large-scale phytoplankton blooms.