All thoughts are moving on shore as we steam in to Honolulu on this final day of our research cruise here on the R/V Kilo Moana. It is hard to measure the impact of any given cruise, but certainly this VERTIGO cruise has had more than its share of success. In cruise jargon, the “event…

The flux of sinking particles, i.e. the mass sinking through a square meter each day, decreases as you go deeper into the sea, and in many regions this decrease is well described by a Power Law: Flux(z) = Flux(zo) (z-zo)-b This expression states that the flux at depth z depends on the initial flux at…

There are over a billion bacteria in every gallon of seawater at the VERTIGO sight, and these organisms play an important role in regulating the quantity of particles that are caught in sediment traps. Karen Casciotti and I (both from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) have big plans for the bacteria that are being sampled…

Phytoplankton don’t expect much from life except to chilli out, fix some carbon dioxide and grow as much as conditions will allow – and fortunately for us mere mortals, liberate an important ingredient for our well being, oxygen. Of course, like anyone else you or I know, their diet requires lots of other goodies too…

Now that the “MOCNESS” plankton net samples are on board, Stephanie Wilson and colleagues are hard at work using microscopes to identify the tiny marine organisms caught at different depths in the ocean. Here is just a selection of their favorite critters caught thus far during VERTIGO.

Typically, when we think about gelatinous animals we think of jellyfish, like the sea nettle, which sting sea bathers or clog fishing nets. Yet these organisms, collectively known as ‘gelatinous zooplankton’, can play an important role in many ecosystems including the open ocean. On the VERTIGO cruises, our group (comprising of Joe Cope, Steph Wilson…

Why is a University of Brussels, Belgium research team that is usually involved with studies of the ocean carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean looking for in the warmer waters off Hawaii? During a 2001 cruise in the icy Southern Ocean waters, we had the opportunity to collaborate with Ken Buesseler, Tom Trull and Phil…

A simple lesson in hydrostatic pressure Water is much heavier than air (actually about 1000 times heavier). This is a simple fact we all take for granted. It is obviously true; if it weren’t rain would fall up and the ocean would be the atmosphere (but this is a silly digression). The weight of a…

The primary goal of VERTIGO is to measure and understand the controls on sinking particles as they enter the twilight zone from the well-lit, surface ocean. To do this, a wide variety of tools and platforms have been deployed. Some of these are arrays of tubes or large cones designed to collect sinking particles from…

Mary Silver (University of California, Santa Cruz) and her collaborator Sara Tanner (Moss Landing Marine Lab) are on board the Research Vessel Kilo Moana collecting water samples and using microscopes to probe the mysteries of the marine particle cycle as part of their contribution to VERTIGO. Here is Mary’s report from June 23rd. One of…

These are the words we’ve been longing to say as we worked for over two years to reach this point of departure out of Honolulu on the R/VKilo Moana with 27 scientists and almost as many crew members on board. It took us only two days to load thousands of pounds of scientific gear to…