Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, we are still working with the samples of the first station in the Caribbean Sea and expect our arrival at the next station in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday night. Whenever we have a low and there is a need for motivation, we cast a quick look at […]
How we study virus diversity in the deep sea
Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, as mentioned in our last blog, we took water samples across 4000 m depth using the CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) – rosette sampler at our first station in the Caribbean Sea. Here, we are interested in the distribution of viruses, bacteria and protists (unicellular organisms) in the depth. The […]
First living ciliate found in over 4000 m depth
Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, we arrived at the first sampling station in the territorial waters of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Sea. During 60 hours of team work, we took water and sediment samples across 4000 m depth using three different systems: Water samples were taken from multiple water depths with […]
Algae and Sand
Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, for the moment, let us focus on the water surface rather than the deep sea: We found stretches of brown algae across the ocean surface (Image 1). Free-floating brown algae like Sargassum are distributed worldwide in warm seas. In summer 2015 in the Caribbean, it was reported as […]
from Ocean Navigator Blog
Foraminiferen – Hilft das gegen Kopfschmerzen?
Meine Faszination für das Meer wurde spätestens deutlich, als meine Eltern mich mit vier Jahren nach drei Stunden Wellenhüpfen aus der Nordsee schleifen mussten: Mit blauen Lippen und am ganzen Körper zitternd, aber glücklich. Seit dem hat sich nichts an meiner Begeisterung für das Meer geändert: Ich lebe nur wenige Kilometer von der Ostsee entfernt, […]
Dry run for the ‘MUC’ sample processing
Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, there are regular presentations given by our scientists on the RV Meteor (Image 1). The first presentation was given by the PhD student Alexandra Schönle from Cologne on her research topic “Protists in the Deep Sea”: How do protists (single-celled eukaryotes, which store DNA in a nucleus) survive […]
Fine-tuning and preliminary experiments
Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, now we are already more than 48 hours at the Caribbean Sea. The laboratories are all set up (Image 1). Some of our scientists had some issues to adapt to the strong waves. Thanks to the doctor on board most of us feel better and we started to […]
Boarding on the RV Meteor
Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, with a slight drizzle and a dense cover of clouds, the boarding on the RV Meteor took place this morning in the Port of Bahia las Minas, Panama. Our team is healthy and had the first meals. After a short briefing by the captain, the routine safety instructions […]
from M138 Blog
You left too soon
Today, it is Dr. Victoria “Vicky” Bertics birthday, she was born July 1, 1982 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. In 2004 she received a dual Bachelor’s degree with honors in Biology and Earth Sciences from the University of California in Berkeley. She then started her PhD thesis at the University of Southern California (USC) in the […]
Welcome to our blog on M139
Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, we are pleased to welcome you to our blog “Deep-Sea Microbial Food Webs and Volcanism in the Atlantic Ocean”. Our interdisciplinary and international team from Cologne, Vienna, Kiel and Oldenburg is currently on its way to Panama. On the 8th of July, there will be the departure of […]