Dead Tricho and friends

The OUTPACE cruise (Oligotrophic to Ultraoligotrophic Pacific Experiment) has finally started! Here we are, just north of New Caledonia, on our first day of sampling. The two days of transit from the harbour until our first station were a little bit hectic. We are 30 scientists onboard performing all sort of biological, chemical and physical analyses, and there were two full containers with materials to unload, set and tight down. It took a while!

We're all set now and the first samples are coming out.

Today we crossed several slicks of what seemed to be dead Trichodesmium aggregating in quite large flocks, easily seen by the naked eye (I'll try to upload a picture later). Onboard qPCR analyses have also confirmed that there's quite a lot of unicellular diazotrophs type B (UCYN-B) here (about 10000 cells per liter). Have a look at our fluorescence microscopy images:

Here we see what it seems to be two different kinds of Trichodesmium. The round ones are UCYN-B.

This one looks like Katagnymene.

Soon the mesopelagic sampling (200-2000m) will start too hopefully :)


Cheers from the ocean!


Mar