{"id":172968,"date":"2021-05-24T11:01:50","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T15:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/?p=172968"},"modified":"2021-05-24T11:01:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T15:01:50","slug":"fitting-in-science-between-the-roaring-waves-and-blustery-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/news\/fitting-in-science-between-the-roaring-waves-and-blustery-wind\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitting in science between the roaring waves and blustery wind"},"content":{"rendered":"
May 24, 2021<\/h5>\n

This is the second in a series of posts by GSO Ph.D. candidate <\/em>Diana Fontaine <\/em><\/a>who is currently in the North Atlantic for the NASA EXPORTS project. You can find <\/em>all of the posts here<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

We are now past the mid-point of the NASA EXPORTS<\/a> cruise aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook<\/em><\/a>, and as I\u2019m writing this we\u2019re on our third weather delay of the trip. Winds are consistently blowing at 50 knots with gusts over 65 knots at times. Waves have been about 20-plus feet which has made for a bumpy, yet exciting adventure! Unfortunately, this means we are unable to carry out our science during these weather days.<\/p>\n

In fact, there were a couple of sediment traps, or sinking particle collectors, that the trap team were unable to recover because of the timing of the first storm. This led to a very stressful few weather days as the trap team patiently awaited recovering the traps before their batteries, and thus GPS locators, died. As a member of one of the water sampling teams, weather days meant we didn\u2019t frantically sample from the CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) Rosette or filter water so we suddenly had lots of time on our hands!<\/p>\n

Luckily, we had already done some experiments on the cruise which meant we had lots of data to enter. These experiments involve taking water samples from the CTD and incubating them under different light levels to stimulate what the cells experience in the natural environment. Our goal of these incubations is three-part: 1) to examine grazing rates of microzooplankton on phytoplankton, 2) to measure net primary production of phytoplankton and 3) to obtain samples for metatransciptomic sequencing (in other words, to get an \u2018inside look\u2019 at cellular function throughout the course of an incubation).<\/p>\n

With these incubation experiments, we will be able to answer questions about how environmental variability at our study site affects grazing rates, phytoplankton growth and lower trophic level function\u2014all important pieces to understand carbon export in the ocean.<\/p>\n