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Greetings from the microbe group! We have collected a total of 11 cores during this cruise so far, and we are currently retrieving more! We have been primarily using the gravity corer but will be switching to the piston core which can penetrate much further into the sediment, up to 9 meters. As you go deeper into the sediment, the chemical compounds that microbes use change based on what is available. At the water-sediment interface, oxygen is available for microbes to use. However, as you go deeper into the sediment and oxygen is no longer available, other compounds like nitrate, iron, and sulfate are used by these microbes. I celebrated my birthday on the ship a couple days ago and the support from the crew and scientists was wonderful! They put decorations on my bedroom door, decorated the galley, and made a cake AND cupcakes. I also was able to hold my first sea pig the other day and all of this made it a birthday I’ll remember for the rest of my life! I was talking with a friend, Dr. Candace Grimes (www.seagrimes.com), and it turns out she celebrated her birthday on this ship a few years ago! She has also sailed with Dr. Sarah Gerken and Dr. Kevin Kocot, which reminds me of how connected our profession is, even when we’re in very different research concentrations. Dr. Katie Howe University of South Alabama
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As the days go by, our EBS samples keep piling up. Sorting them is so exciting – especially for me, since it means getting my hands on some Tanaids! Every now and then, we spot flashes of orange (or pink… or brown… honestly, the lab is in constant disagreement over what color this actually is). These little guys belong to the genus Nototanais, and what makes them particularly interesting is their sexual dimorphism! Before we dive into that, let’s go over what a typical tanaid looks like (see picture below!). Their body consists of a cephalothorax, pereon, and pleon. Cephalothorax is covered by a calcified carapace. Like other crustaceans, tanaids have two pairs of antennae, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillae. The cephalothorax also has maxillipeds and a pair of large grasping appendages (chelipeds) that end in claw-like pincers (kind of like tiny boxing gloves). The pereon consists of six segments, called pereonites, each with a pair of legs (pereopods). The abdomen is made up of six pleonites, with the last one fused to the telson, forming the pleotelson. The abdominal appendages include five pairs of pleopods and a final pair of uropods. Now, back to that dimorphism… Female Nototanais have a slim, streamlined body with proportionally normal-sized chelipeds. Males, on the other hand, tend to be slightly larger, but their real characteristic feature is their massive chelipeds, which vary in shape depending on the species. Tanaidacea researchers believe these enlarged pincers help males hold onto multiple females, especially during the breeding season. What’s surprising is just how many males we’re finding in our samples. Very often, they outnumber the females in our samples. Which raises the question… is the Ross Sea ruled by males? Kamila Głuchowska University of Łódź Hi everyone, it's me again—Florian, the Heat-Flow guy on Cruise NBP-25-01! Before diving into the details of how we measure heat flow, I have some exciting news—we got our first measurement! Even better, we got 43! In this episode, we’ll take a closer look at the Giant Heat Flow Probe (pictures included). On this cruise, we’re using a 6-meter-long "Violin Bow Style" Heat Flow Probe, a tool designed to measure temperature in the seafloor to ultimately calculate how much heat is escaping from inside the Earth. The probe consists of a long metal rod, called the strength member, with a sensor string (shaped like a violin bow) attached to it. This string houses 22 thermistors (high-precision thermometers) that record temperature within the sediment. At the top of the probe, the head unit contains the electronics that record all the data and adds the necessary weight to help the probe penetrate the seafloor. The probe is lowered from the ship and driven into the seabed by its own weight—an impressive one metric ton. Once in place, it waits about 10 minutes for any frictional heat from penetration to dissipate. Then, a heat pulse is fired, and the thermistors (15 active ones in our case) measure how quickly the surrounding sediment absorbs and releases this heat. This data allows us to calculate how much heat is flowing from inside the Earth. After the measurement, the probe is retrieved, and we analyze the data to gain insights into the thermal environment beneath the ocean floor. Next time, we’ll explore how we calculate heat flow from these measurements—stay tuned! Dr. Florian Neumann MARUM, University of Bremen One of our first EBS brought us a lot of joy. While our team usually focuses on tiny animals that can only be seen under a microscope, this time, a sea pig ended up in our net! Let’s take a moment to talk about these adorable creatures. A sea pig (Scotoplanes sp.) is a deep-sea sea cucumber from the family Elpidiidae. It lives thousands of meters below the surface and uses its tiny, tube-like legs to walk along the seafloor. These soft, jelly-like animals feed by sucking up organic matter from the mud. Despite their cute name, sea pigs are tough survivors in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. After taking a few photos, we released the sea pig back home, but it reminded me of something funny. Since my first language is Polish, I started thinking about how to say sea pig in Polish. A direct translation would be świnka morska – but there’s a problem… In Polish, świnka morska actually means guinea pig! The name świnka morska most likely comes from historical trade routes. Guinea pigs were brought to Europe by sea, possibly from South America via ships, which might explain the “sea” part. The “pig” part comes from their appearance and the squealing sounds they make, which resemble those of pigs. Language can be tricky, and this little mix-up is a perfect example of how words don’t always translate the way you’d expect. Kamila Głuchowska Univeristy of Łódź Sorry for the lapse in posts but there's few of us and many invertebrates! So far the cruise has been a great success for the IcyInverts team and everyone on board, it seems! We have had four epibenthic sledge (EBS) casts so far and they have all been successful. We have sampled an incredible diversity of invertebrates and been able to take nice photos of many. Today I'd like to highlight one group that we are targeting - and that is particularly photogenic - Amphipoda. Amphipods are small (mostly), shrimp-like crustaceans. They belong to the crustacean taxon Peracarida, which also includes the cumaceans we've posted about previously as well as isopods (e.g., "rolly pollies" or "pill bugs" in your back yard) and others. Amphipods are remarkably diverse in Antarctica where they are like the bugs of the sea. Worldwide, there are over 10,000 species named and many more yet to be formally described. We are collecting specimens of this group in order to determine their evolutionary relationship to other peracarids as part of a recently funded NSF grant project. Read more about our project at www.peracarida.org. Some amphipods are really beautiful. Here's a few of my favorite photos that I've taken of this taxon so far. Dr. Kevin Kocot University of Alabama Hello again from the microbe group! Since our first post, we have collected water and sediment samples that we will extract DNA and RNA from so that we can investigate the microbial community and activity. These cores are about 2 meters long (photo below), so we need to cut them up into smaller pieces (photo below) for further processing. Each core segment ends up being roughly 25cm long. We drill a small hole into the top part of each segment so that our collaborators from TAMUCC can capture methane gas, if it is present. Our group takes oxygen measurements (photo below) from that same hole, then we cut open a rectangular window and remove some of the sediment (photo below) to freeze for processing back at our lab at the University of South Alabama. We wear gloves, face masks, and hairnets to ensure we don’t accidentally put our bacteria into these samples. We also wear safety glasses when we use power tools to drill the holes and cut the rectangular window. We have six cores so far and we hope to get many more, but the coring equipment and ice formation will determine what additional samples we get. Keep your fingers crossed for us! Dr. Katie Howe University of South Alabama Our Precious! Blue, our EBS (EpiBenthic Sled) ran perfectly last night! We love this piece of gear, it works so well. Let me explain: an EBS samples the organisms that live at the sediment/water interface, which usually includes lots of mud. An ideal EBS run is one where we get lots of animals and not too much sediment. The nets come up clean, and the codends (animal collectors) are full of interesting creatures. Last night, we had an awesome EBS run, and quite surprisingly we even got a good sized sea pig. We returned the sea pig to the water after a quick photo shoot, as we are interested in small crustaceans, not echinoderms. By the way, sea pigs are perhaps the least spiny-skinned echinoderms I’ve met. After the sled comes on board, we keep the codends upright to keep the animals and sediment inside. We remove the codends from the nets, and put the codends into buckets of water that is collected from close to the seafloor nearby (thanks to Wade Jeffries’ water samples). The buckets are then brought into the wet lab and we sieve the material to separate the animals from the mud. Once the samples are sieved, we keep them in a cold room (Little Antarctica) in the dark until the sample is brought to the lab for sorting. We keep everything cold and dark as much as possible, so that the organisms are in an environment similar to the one where they were collected. Dr. Sarah Gerken University of Alaska Anchorage Aside from collecting and preserving specimens, two crucial aspects of the IcyInverts team's work involves taking the best possible photos of living animals that we can prior to preservation and meticulous recording of all the associated data (who, what, when, and where) for each specimen. After the cruise, all of these images and data will be will made freely available through the Alabama Museum of Natural History via several online portals (see below), ensuring they are accessible to researchers worldwide. Capturing High-Quality Images of Specimens Taking high-quality photos of animals on the order of 1 mm to a few cm in size can be a challenge. Our photography setup is comprised of off-the-shelf equipment including a Canon 5D Mark IV body, a Canon MP-E 65 mm macro lens, speedlights, and a LMscope macro stand that essentially turns the camera into a stereomicroscope. Given the shallow depth of field inherent in macro photography, it would be great if we could employ focus stacking. This involves taking multiple images at varying focal points and merging them to produce a single, sharp image throughout. Unfortunately, that's just not possible on a moving ship with specimens in dishes of sea water. Instead, we use intense, diffused lighting and a quick shutter speed to try to minimize shadows and highlight true colors, ensuring the images are both scientifically useful and visually appealing. For really tiny animals, we rely on the excellent compound microscopes on board the NBP. Although we're not professional photographers, we've been very happy with the quality of images we are able to get while working quickly to process specimens in the lab while they are still happy. Taking the best photos we can in the field is important because once specimens are preserved, they typically lose their color and/or shrivel up. Crustaceans, for example, often are brightly colored in life but typically appear off-white after preservation in alcohol. Recording Detailed Specimen Data Accurate data recording is paramount. For each specimen, we document:
This comprehensive data collection ensures that each specimen's context and characteristics are thoroughly documented. Digitization and Data Sharing Our commitment to open science drives us to make specimen data and images accessible through various platforms. These platforms enable researchers worldwide to access our data, fostering collaboration and furthering scientific discovery.
Our digitization efforts are bolstered by the DigIn project, a collaborative initiative aimed at documenting marine biodiversity through the digitization of invertebrate collections. By standardizing protocols and providing resources, DigIn enhances our capacity to share high-quality data for Antarctic marine invertebrates with the global scientific community. Dr. Kevin Kocot University of Alabama Our first day of sampling with the epibenthic sled (EBS) is officially in the books! Around 11:30 pm, the EBS was deployed with 750 m of wire, and after towing the sled for around 15 minutes with the ship’s speed at 0.5 kt, it was brought on deck around 12:45 am. The first haul brought in 101 cumaceans from seven different species! In addition, we collected hundred of amphipods, many isopods, tanaids, gastropods, to name a few. We feel so lucky to have collected such a rich sample for our first deployment. Since cumaceans are sensitive to light and temperature, our workflow focused on keeping them in the best possible condition for downstream analysis. We kept samples cold on a chilling stage fill we sorted the sample, minimized their light exposure, and worked quickly to document them. Each specimen was photographed before being preserved for DNA extraction, which we’ll prepare for sequencing once we're back at the University of Alaska Anchorage. It’s always exciting to see the first real data come in, and this was an amazing start! Victoria Vandersommen University of Alaska Anchorage Imagine you get a message about some amazing views outside (penguins/seals/beautiful glacier). It might seem like all you need to do is throw on a jacket, grab your camera or phone, and head out. But it’s not that simple... Let’s get dressed together! 1st layer: You need a warm, snug base layer. Think of thermal clothes like fleece pants and a sweater that zips up all the way to your neck. Make sure this layer fits tightly against your body. And don’t forget your socks – preferably two pairs! 2nd layer: Wear insulated, waterproof, and windproof pants with suspenders. These pants have elastic at the bottom of the legs to keep them in place. You can add an extra sweater on top as an additional layer. 3rd layer: Time for accessories! Put on a warm hat, a neck warmer, and goggles or sunglasses with proper UV protection. For your hands, wear two pairs of gloves: a thin pair that fits closely and a thick, insulated, waterproof pair. This is especially useful if you’re taking pictures with your phone. The thick gloves might limit your movement, so when you take them off, you still have the thin ones to keep your hands warm. Don’t forget your boots too. 4th layer: Finish up with the big red jacket – a warm, comfortable jacket you can proudly call your own because of the name tag. Remember to zip it all the way up to your neck and to put on the hood. And that’s it! You’re ready for an adventure to enjoy everything Antarctica has to offer. Kamila Głuchowska University of Łódź |
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