Planktongeschwabbel

Net hauls have so far provided valuable insights into the gelatinous zooplankton communities along our transect from the Mediterranean Sea into the North Atlantic Ocean. While our sampling sites in the Strait of Gibraltar were mostly populated by pelagic tunicates (salps), several hydromedusae (A. Liriope sp. with abundances of up to 1 ind. m-3), the […]

NETS ON THE ATLANTIC COAST

The weather is beautiful off the Portugal coast right now, and we’re having lots of sampling success. We just finished deploying various nets to sample microplastic particles, zooplankton, and gelatinous zooplankton. The net sampling starts with this 1.5m diameter WP3 net. The net is dropped to 100 m, and towed vertically to collect gelatinous zooplankton […]

Watchman, watchman, do you copy?

It is 8 am in Peru, the sun is shining up in the sky and the boats are out on the water sampling. I relieve Toralf, who has been awake since 5am, from his position as watchman for the next 4 hours. Little by little the members of the KOSMOS-CUSCO team are trickling in and […]

The deep water hunt

32 µmol nitrate per liter – fantastic!! Better than I dared to dream. But let’s start from the beginning. The main objective of our study is to unravel how changes in upwelling intensity affect the food web and elemental cycling in the Peruvian upwelling system. Simply speaking, should upwelling intensity decline let’s say by 50% […]

AL534-2

The first official HOTMIC research cruise will be on F/S Alkor, and leaves from Malaga, Spain, on 05 March. The cruise track will follow the European coast from the Mediterranean Sea through the eastern Atlantic, Bay of Biscay, English Channel, and North Sea, to finish in the Baltic Sea at Kiel, Germany, on 01 April. […]

It’s go time baby!

Water perspective by Sebastian Cantarero: After weeks of preparing, scheming, and building of suspense the day finally arrived! A group of highly trained secret agent scientists waited in the wee hours of the morning for word that Captain Jana and the sediment trap team was returning to dock, giving us the go ahead to start […]