From the ends of the earth to the depths of the seas - Sea Lab Scientists in the Field

It takes years of education, training and hard work to become a marine scientist, but the field does have its perquisites, including the opportunity to travel to exotic locales to conduct one's own research.

Recently, Dr. Ron Kiene took a crew of Sea Lab personnel with him as he led a research cruise aboard the R.V. Nathaniel B. Palmer.  The "Nattie B." headed south from New Zealand to the Ross Sea, Antarctica. The Southern Ocean grows great quantities of algae known as Phaeocystis that degrade into a sulfurous gas called dimethylsulfide (DMS).  The process through which that gas is cycled into the atmosphere is the subject of Dr. Kiene's research. Once it is in the atmosphere, DMS generates particles, affecting clouds that may shield the Earth from increasing solar radiation or global warming.  DMS may prove to be an anti-greenhouse effect gas.

The 38 days at sea aboard ship wasn't all CTD's and Niskin bottles.  Dr. Kiene and Lab Technician Laura Linn spent time e-mailing their adventures to classrooms in Mobile, Alabama as part of an educational exchange.  (See Dr. Kiene's e-mail correspondence with O'Rourke Elementary's fifth-grade class at http://press.disl.org/pressreleases.html.)  Fascinated by the animals and habitats of Antarctica, students demanded to know what kind of whales the researchers would see, what kind of clothes the scientists would wear, how late the sun would stay out, and most importantly, when would they encounter any penguins?

After sadly reporting a no-show with the penguins in the early part of their trip, Dr. Kiene was happy to have this to report a few weeks into the trip: 

"We were in the Zodiac, and there were some penguins swimming around the boat. I had turned to look at the ship in the distance when I heard a commotion in the boat behind me.  People were shrieking and scrambling - I thought someone had dropped their camera.  When I turned around, to my surprise, I saw that a penguin had jumped into the boat!  No fooling - he really jumped into the boat.  He must have thought the boat was an ice floe.  He was a very surprised penguin, let me tell you.   Amazingly, I managed to snap a photo, and I got a pretty good picture of this surprised bird.  The bird was of course very scared, so Eric our boat driver quickly picked him up and put him back in the water.  We were all laughing hysterically after that.  It made our day."

The students at O'Rourke Elementary also got a first-hand chance to participate in the scientific process.  They sent along decorated styrofoam cups with Dr. Kiene, who attached them to sampling gear and sent the cups down 690 meters into the Ross Sea.  The cups returned from their dip crushed, demonstrating the pressure that occurs in the deep ocean.

Dr. Kiene and his team were fortunate to be able to land at the end of their cruise at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, a sketchy proposition given the obstacle of a huge iceberg that had broken off the Ross Ice Shelf, due to, ironically, global warming.

In a much more temperate atmosphere, Dr. Will Schroeder explored the deep seas of the northern Gulf of Mexico with a multi-disciplinary team that examined sunken Allied vessels from World War II.  In a two-pronged approach, archeologists were eager to document these steel-hulled and assess their historical merit, while oceanographers and biologists gleaned information from these vessels as artificial reef sites. (Visit www.pastfoundation.org for more information on this study).

With their range of depths reflecting different ecological habitats, the sunken ships provided ideal subjects to examine such questions as how microbes may have disintegrated the steel structures differently, or what the impact of these hard structures might have on fish populations.  Dr. Schroeder was particularly interested in the coral growth on the hard substrates of these shipwrecks.