Deep Sea Microbiology
kbonham | April 20, 2012Yesterday on Marketplace, there was a great piece by Alex Chadwick on the fate of all the oil released during the BP oil spill two years ago.
Oil is a product of organic matter that was deposited many, many years ago. It's gone through many, many changes deep in earth under high pressure, high temperature -- but fundamentally it's an organic material.
This is hard to grasp. Oil is food, an organic buffet for microbes. So, two years ago, when the BP oil plumed in the water, very soon the bacteria plumed, too. Different kinds in different parts of the ecosystem -- deep water, shallow, shoreline…
heathero | August 23, 2011Ever wondered what the bottom of the ocean looks like? Well, now's your chance to check out streaming live HD footage from the ROV ROPOS which is currently working out at Axial Volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Currently they are checking out a brand new lava flow, but later this evening and tomorrow they will be working at Ashes hydrothermal vent field (one of my study sites). While not all of the work is microbe-related (there is a lot of geology going on), the fact that they are streaming live and sharing audio conversations with other scientists on land was too cool to share. Also,…
kbonham | July 12, 2011In some ways, I'm kinda jealous of the research Heather does. I love my macrophages, but studying the bugs that live in the extreme environment of deep sea hydrothermal vents has always fascinated me.
As a consequence of the stuff she studies, Heather also has to (gets to?) take multi-week sea voyages to travel out to these creatures' hang out in order to gather samples.
This year we will once again be on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, but we will be further South at Ashes vent field in Axial caldera. I'll see if I can find a map for the next post. We will be deploying an exciting instrument to do…
heathero | February 15, 2011I mentioned this study a while ago, and promised a more detailed explanation. I apologize for how long it has taken, but here it is.
How excited was I to learn that the most recent issue of Nature Geoscience had a special focus on deep sea carbon cycling? I admit it, pretty excited. I was even more excited to learn that one of the 3 papers making up this special focus was about the microbial component of deep sea carbon cycling. This may not be something that you think about every day, but I do... well most days at least. The first two sentences of this paper explain why I find this…
heathero | November 10, 2010Rarely do I read papers whose title really sums up exactly what is so cool about the study in a succinct way, free of jargon. I think that "First Investigation of the Microbiology of the Deepest Layer of Ocean Crust" does just that. It isn't trying to be sexy... it just is!
Examining the microbial communities in the so-called "deep subsurface biosphere" is a relatively new field. Until recently people didn't think there was much, or really any, life deep in Earth's crust. As with many scientific assumptions made before scientists had the opportunity to actually study a new environment...…
dnayak | November 2, 2010A lot has been said, written, and discussed about the recent Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill has been capped but the damage remains. The Gulf of Mexico has now become the feedstock of several battles, fierce and feeble, in the legal, political and scientific realm. What battles you say? It's what on your mind as well - What will happen of the Gulf of Mexico? What do we need to do to save the physical, chemical and biological environment? And the worst of all - Is the damage irreversible?
Sadly, we don't have any answers yet. And let's face it - there is no right answer. What we do…