Samples on a journey

Thanks to Lenni and his big car, today a lot of samples were sent with him from Kristineberg back to Kiel. It´s already the second time during the running experiment, that someone took samples home to GEOMAR, which gives us not only new freezer space here to keep on collecting and storing samples but also makes our […]

The KOSMOS rocks

In the second episode of the fifth season of the cult TV series from the 90s “X-files”, the beautiful Agent Scully meets with Dr. Vitagliano. He was asked by the FBI to grow some unclassified cellular material found in an ice core sample. To his surprise, the cells started to divide. Agent Scully: “They began […]

Everything you wanted to know about (urchin) sex

Daddy? – Yes – How do you make babies? – (…) – Daddy? – Well, first you need sodium chloride solution in filtered sea water… – I am gonna ask mummy. If you are a parent, you are doomed to answer questions about life, the universe and everything. Being a marine biologist may help you […]

Welcome to the real world

Pluteus larvae of the green sea urchin “Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis” What would you do if I give you 1 million euros to investigate the impact of ocean acidification? There is no good or bad answer to this (tricky) question. There is so much to be done. But we all agree that it is important to collect […]

Harvest, part one

Over the daily routine of collecting samples, nursing fish larvae, maintaining the mesocosms, filtering tons of water, counting plankton, analysing data and maaaaaaybe going to the sauna in the evenings, the memory of our little media invasion must have become blurred for the KOSMOS 2013 team at Kristineberg. Back in Kiel, I am still enjoying […]

There and back again

Plankton wheel with incubation bottles. Photo: H. Horn, AWI When the news about the bloom finally kicking in reached me on the lovely but remote island of Helgoland, it was time to pack and to go back to Kristineberg. The“Dune ferry – plane to the mainland – train to Kiel – ferry to Gothenburg – […]

The party is over …

The phytoplankton bloom party in our mesocosms is over. The booze (i.e. inorganic nutrients) is gone and the crowds at the lower end of the food web are leaving. The exit door is the sediment trap at the bottom of the mesocosm, which is filing up quickly much to Tim’s delight. Surprisingly, our VIP bloomer, […]