Today we begin with the analysis of sediment. Conducting various experiments on the sediment to see whats happening. Is there a lot of oxygenating activity? Is there not much happening? Is there plenty of organic matter? All these questions and more.
Our gear was deployed early in the day so we got a good running start at the science end. On previous deployments the box corer has actually broken, it’s smashed up against rocks and got rather seriously mangled. Having had a look up close at the corer it should be noted that smashing it is not an easy task. It’s a serious piece of kit. We did get a bit of time up on deck, which was an awesome break from watching the insides of a microscope, got to see some of the bird life.
Our gear was deployed early in the day so we got a good running start at the science end. On previous deployments the box corer has actually broken, it’s smashed up against rocks and got rather seriously mangled. Having had a look up close at the corer it should be noted that smashing it is not an easy task. It’s a serious piece of kit. We did get a bit of time up on deck, which was an awesome break from watching the insides of a microscope, got to see some of the bird life.
And appreciate some of the awesomeness that is the Arctic. It’s always good to get out and have some fresh air now and again to get a reminder of why we do all these things.
The box corer returned successful. Basically this piece of kit takes a solid chunk out of the sea floor and returns it to the surface, as is happening here.
We then take smaller samples out of this one solid core of mud and conduct a number of experiments on them to get a better understanding of what is going on down there. So one of these littler cores looks like this:
And then for one of the experiments we have to take slices from each core at every 5mm until 2cm and then every 2cm until 10cm. Why more earlier? Because that is where most of the action is, and there for it’s good to have a look at it at a higher resolution. So how is this done? By slicing the core very very carefully. Yet again another skill to learn rapidly then demonstrate excellence at, we got pretty good at it, and started awarding grades for the smoothness of slice, and of course grades were deducted for mud spills.
Then those slices are sampled for various tests to be done later in the day. Many of these tests require that the sediment rests for a while and so we spent a little bit of time developing better understanding of some of the calculations we will be applying to our data.
Also, please note this is real science, there are test tubes.
We had to sample the cores for a whole bunch of different tests and due to my trusting nature I somehow ended up with the most deadly form of testing. This involves a giant syringe, two needles and a small vial with Mercury Chloride inside it. Apparently Mercury Chloride is quite deadly, but only when eaten, so if I manage to avoid eating the vials it’s likely I’ll live. As you can probably guess because this blog is being written, I did indeed survive, and life is sweet.
During the night we got up every 3 hours to measure the oxygen with a small fibre optic laser and the temperature of the bath of water that the cores are sitting in. No reset for the wicked as they say, although this data should give us some interesting information. More details are given below.
Now to really understand what we are doing today we have to read a paper, which we were supposed to read before we got on the ship but it all seemed to be a little alien to me and it’s making much more sense now we are doing something similar. So here’s some notes from the paper below. Have fun!
We’ll start with “Carbon cycling by seafloor communities on the eastern Beaufort Sea shelf”, as you can guess it’s about benthic carbon cycling. We did a little piece the other day about the importance of this for the global climate system, so we’ve already established that it’s a good thing to understand. Who doesn’t want to be able to pick up cute girls/fellas at parties with a solid understanding of carbon cycling? The story behind this paper is that the sea floor in the Beaufort Sea Shelf area is punching above its weight when it comes to cycling carbon. It’s actually a really important part of the carbon cycle up here, as are a number of geographical features such as shelfs and areas around polynas. Their productivity (activity, actions) make up for the lack of productivity in some of the areas with less exciting geography and less dramatic relief (ie. The flat bits).
Evidence of this productivity can be seen just by an increased amount of wildlife activity in the area. It should also be noted that the Arctic is different to other food chains globally. In the Arctic energy travels quickly from the small animals up to the big animals, whereas energy in other food systems travels much slower.
During the night we got up every 3 hours to measure the oxygen with a small fibre optic laser and the temperature of the bath of water that the cores are sitting in. No reset for the wicked as they say, although this data should give us some interesting information. More details are given below.
Now to really understand what we are doing today we have to read a paper, which we were supposed to read before we got on the ship but it all seemed to be a little alien to me and it’s making much more sense now we are doing something similar. So here’s some notes from the paper below. Have fun!
We’ll start with “Carbon cycling by seafloor communities on the eastern Beaufort Sea shelf”, as you can guess it’s about benthic carbon cycling. We did a little piece the other day about the importance of this for the global climate system, so we’ve already established that it’s a good thing to understand. Who doesn’t want to be able to pick up cute girls/fellas at parties with a solid understanding of carbon cycling? The story behind this paper is that the sea floor in the Beaufort Sea Shelf area is punching above its weight when it comes to cycling carbon. It’s actually a really important part of the carbon cycle up here, as are a number of geographical features such as shelfs and areas around polynas. Their productivity (activity, actions) make up for the lack of productivity in some of the areas with less exciting geography and less dramatic relief (ie. The flat bits).
Evidence of this productivity can be seen just by an increased amount of wildlife activity in the area. It should also be noted that the Arctic is different to other food chains globally. In the Arctic energy travels quickly from the small animals up to the big animals, whereas energy in other food systems travels much slower.
So, we need to understand in what form the carbon is when it gets to the sea floor and then what the sea floor does with that carbon when it gets there. This is important particularly for understanding carbon sequestration in this area as well as nutrient regeneration and how sensitive the community will be when it comes to changes in the environment. It will also help us to understand what changes may happen with climate change, if the nature of the community living on the sea floor is altered then the fate of the carbon that drops down there will change as well. This is part of the problem with climate change science, there are so many variables, and we are playing with a system so complex and without straightforward linkages between points that so many different things could happen. Though I should point out, from what I’ve read in most cases scientists are actually considering the best case scenarios, more often than not they don’t consider what happens when you get a really truly catastrophic event. Find that reassuring or not as you will. Back to the paper!
So now you have the background of why this research is done. Now on to the Methods, we are doing something so similar to what is described in the paper that you might be suspicion were it not for the fact that the people who wrote the paper are also the people who are running the cruise.
So, there’s what I have already described, the collection of the core samples, and now we are onto analysing these samples. Part of the slices will be popped into a tube with some acetone (already done and sitting in the fridge), this is done to extract the “pigments” which are then analysed with a flurometer as they are and then after acid is added.
Whilst this is happening some of our cores are “incubating”. So some of the tubes, as seen above, are being bubbled with water collected from the bottom of the ocean. This is being done to test how much oxygen the benthos is using. How much do those little fellows breathe? The paper we are reading did something a bit cooler, they collected one individual from each species they observed on the sea floor and popped that into the tube to see how much that creature was breathing.
So now you have the background of why this research is done. Now on to the Methods, we are doing something so similar to what is described in the paper that you might be suspicion were it not for the fact that the people who wrote the paper are also the people who are running the cruise.
So, there’s what I have already described, the collection of the core samples, and now we are onto analysing these samples. Part of the slices will be popped into a tube with some acetone (already done and sitting in the fridge), this is done to extract the “pigments” which are then analysed with a flurometer as they are and then after acid is added.
Whilst this is happening some of our cores are “incubating”. So some of the tubes, as seen above, are being bubbled with water collected from the bottom of the ocean. This is being done to test how much oxygen the benthos is using. How much do those little fellows breathe? The paper we are reading did something a bit cooler, they collected one individual from each species they observed on the sea floor and popped that into the tube to see how much that creature was breathing.
And so the story con