Author & Pictures: Michael Sswat “We are going for another mesocosm experiment”, this sounds quite familiar, and by now, friends and family just ask “where and how long will you go?”. This time, me and my colleauges went to Bergen in Norway for 3 months to study ocean alkalinity enhancement, a potential method to remove […]

Author: Juliane Tammen, Pictures: Juliane Tammen & Michael Sswat Is there a better way to start a 2.5 month long scientific study than using a research vessel as a cruise ship? Our 10 mesocosms needed to be transported and deployed by the research vessel Alkor. As the ship is not only able to transport mesocosms […]

In my last post, I described how we take samples from our mesocosms and how the filtration for particles inside the water is done afterwards. Now, some people may ask: Why is all this done? Would it not be enough to just filter the water one time? What are all these different filters used for […]

Throughout the past few weeks of the mesocosm experiment I have been having these recurring dreams in which I was a traveling microalga. My life as a dinoflagellate named Scrippsiella had been quite ordinary before I was collected from one of the mesocosms. Floating freely in the water column, I had been capturing photons from […]

Nutrients are an essential part of every food web. Every organism on Earth needs nutrition to build up amino acids, proteins, enzymes etc. It is necessary to maintain the integrity of every cell. In the ocean, there are three major inorganic nutrients, which are important for marine primary production, but also often limited in supply: […]

Once the mesocosm experiment sails smoothly (this rarely happens, but astonishingly, this time it’s the case à knock on wood), most of the divers can concentrate on the real life as a scientist above water in their grey labs and offices – the colorful, exciting harbor life (mentioned in the first post) becoming only a […]

Making oxygen (O2) magic just looks cool, but it is also fascinating and highly relevant. This analysis looks into the amount of oxygen that exists in a water sample. As we all know, oxygen is essential for most living organisms. All of them breath it in, and some of them actually release it back and […]

I study MSc. Biological Oceanography approaching my 3rd semester and I‘m very happy to take part in this year’s OCEAN-NETs mesocosm-experiment on the island of Gran Canaria. Since Covid-19 made a cut to most encounters with physically present scientists, I am only now reflecting upon the impressions I get from working together with real flesh-and-blood-researchers […]

Mesocosms need upkeep as much as any other equipment. Today, a handful of divers and volunteers made their way down to the pier in the sweltering heat to scrub the walls of the mesocosms clean from the inside and out. For all mesocosms to receive the same amount of light, they need to be freed […]

As the ocean is one of our biggest allies in the battle against climate change, we didn’t miss the chance to contribute to the Global Day of Climate Action. The fight against climate change is probably one of the biggest challenges of our generation. If we want to sustain a habitable planet we need to […]