Marine biogeochemist Clare Ostle tracks the stories that plankton tell from all corners of the globe.
In 1925, zoologist Sir Alister Hardy launched a survey of plankton while he was exploring Antarctica. Almost 100 years later, I’m continuing part of that same endeavour, called the Continuous Plankton Recorder survey. Here, aboard our research vessel, theThe device is a metre-long metal torpedo towed off a boat. Inside, two pieces of silk on a scroll sample the water, picking up plankton between them.
Our taxonomists can identify 800 taxa of phytoplankton and zooplankton. They examine what I call plankton ‘roadkill’, after the organisms smash against the silk at 10 metres per second.We have routes that go from Canada to Japan, the United Kingdom to the Caribbean and even into the Arctic Ocean.
Container ships are ideal for consistently sampling from the same route every month. We can go on a limited budget, usually just biscuits and beer for the crew. They enjoy knowing that ‘fishing for plankton’ is doing something interesting for science. Because we store every sample, other researchers can find unexpected signals in the ocean later on. For example,used CPR samples to show an increase in ocean microplastics. Another researcher tracked the bacteria that caused a 2018 cholera outbreak in British Columbia, Canada, with CPR samples. It’s exciting to be sitting on this database that someone with a different eye can pick up to tell untold stories.
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