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An introduction to the microscopic world of the sea and sediment

By Marianna Karagiannis Sylvia and me (Marianna) extruding a sediment core into small slices from the sediment-water interface downwards As I was elbow deep in a bucket of deep-sea mud, the stench of sulfide permeating my pores, I felt such joy that I get paid to do this work. This may not be everyone's idea of a fun time, but this mud is special. When you think about the effort (and grant money) that it took to get a single scoop of sediment, it's hard not to feel honored to

Spending weeks at a time on a single boat, working long days in the blazing sun and battling sea-sickness, can be a rough experience (but still worth it for the samples! And data!). There's some definite perks to being out here, though, and working long hours means we get to experience all sorts of things I would never see otherwise. When I'm up at 2am troubleshooting a piece of equipment that I need to get to work, with no way to go buy tools at a Home Depot, there's nothing

Deploying our net traps off the back of the boat In between watching gorgeous sunsets and enjoying the flying fish, we've managed to fit in a lot of science, and at least a couple hours of sleep! One of our main cruise objectives is to understand the sinking organic matter in this region, which includes "marine snow", to understand why this part of the ocean is so efficient at trapping carbon. We use two types of tools to catch this sinking organic matter: net traps and Parti