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Published: June 19th 2012
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So what are we doing here anyway?
Well, a lot of things. In general, we’re looking at small, unicellular algae, and the relationship they have with viruses. The interplay between the two specific organisms we’re looking at, the algae host
Emiliania huxleyi and its specific virus, have a huge influence on the ocean and atmosphere. Algae are the basis for the entire marine food web, and they might even produce small molecules that can influence cloud cover over the ocean.
So we mainly sample water (I will describe how we do this in a later post), some of the samples will be sent back to our land-based labs, but some can be analyzed on board. A unique part of what we’re doing is measuring the aerosols in the atmosphere, and we are even trying to characterize the biology of the air above the algae blooms. We are lucky to have Yoav and Shlomit with us, who actually know how to do this. With the aid of Miri and Michel (who aren’t in fact floating along with us) they set up the coolest lab on one of the upper decks of the boat. They have pumps
and tubing going up to about 10 meters above the deck, so they can try getting clean air, then they have all sorts of equipment to measure small particles in the air.
I will go into detail about how we try find the blooms later, but let me just say that so far we haven’t been too successful…
Lucky for me, Shlomit has written an entry for you all to read. Here it is:
I didn’t think it will be that hard. I was thinking o.k, so we are going to the ocean, we have a captain that will take us to the places with the green spots on the satellite map, we will get there, sample the water, sample the air, get great results and publish them in
Nature and everyone will be happy. With the technology today we can reach to the moon, so what’s the problem find a phytoplankton bloom in the ocean??
I guess I was too naive. The ocean is big and the satellite maps are dynamics and continuously changing. Other than that you need someone to interpret them
correctly.
Another question that bothers me: In case we will see anything in water or in the atmosphere, how we will know that it’s not background? The fact that measurement effect the results is not just in quantum mechanics, it’s in every aspect of science (and life); we will have a lot of work to separate background signals such as ship soot, weather signatures and our lunch (we are right above the kitchen chimneys).
Another aspect (and most important) is that our results are very much affected from what we expected to see… for example: we don’t see signature of the virus in the water so we thinks that the probability of observing it in the air is small too. Our intuition is probably right but it can be misleading, especially if we would like to see something new.
So I hope our atmosphere won’t affect our atmosphere measurements (ha ha!) and I’m sure we will find our
E. huxleyi friends. We are only in the 1/6 part of our journey so we need to be patient. Once I was been told that what’s important in life is the journey and not the destination. I told this to Yoav, and he said I was fooled. :-)
Shlomit
Thanks Shlomit! Now, maybe I can get the other guys to write too…
I think I managed to find a way to publish some pictures, take a look
Daniella
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Keren Limor-Waisberg
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Good Luck to you all!
Good Luck to you all!