BIOCAL research cruise

Ready to go!

We all arrived in the lovely city of Vigo and are now on the research vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa. After loading the boat with the material necessary for the cruise we are setting up the labs, coordinating the activities, having the necessary introduction to life on the ship and safety procedures. Organizing a cruise taught us to be ready for last-minute changes and to find alternative solutions, like inventing a new sampling system since not receiving some new equipment and bottles necessary for some specific traditional sampling forced the need. We had to buy last missing items on the 15 ^th  of August when everything is closed! We are now ready to leave tomorrow for our station#1!

Stories of scientists and their samples

For the next 30 days, 42 passengers will be aboard the Sarmiento de Gamboa, a 70.5 meter oceanographic research vessel. The team is made up of 15 researchers and 27 crew members and technicians. Our destination: the Arctic. After a quick detour south toward the Azores, we will head north. Along the way, we will be sampling water at different depths and collecting sediments from the seabed. 

Both water and sediments tell us stories. The water is full of life, particles, and plastic. Where light is available, microscopic algae (first photo) capture energy from the sun. These phytoplankton are the bridge between the sun and all life dependent on the ocean. But the story of life in the water is a sad one. The ocean is absorbing much of the CO ₂  humans have put into the atmosphere acidifying the water and making it harder for phytoplankton to produce their shield-like shells that keep them safe and afloat. 

The story of the sediments is a story of the past. Everything that was once in the water ends up floating down into the dark depths of the seabed. The top tells the story of the recent past, and layer after layer we travel through time like reading a book from end to beginning. In these sediments, amongst other things, we can find tiny fish ear bones. These ear bones, or otoliths (second photo), are unique to each fish species, and like rings of a tree, allow us to estimate the age of fish of the past. We are not sure how these otoliths are formed, but what we do know is that each ring represents approximately one year, reminding us of the cyclical nature of time. Each ring's discoloration tells the mysterious story of seasonal patterns, migrations, and behaviour as well as changes in ocean chemistry and conditions. They tell the story of fish flowing with seasonal ocean patterns until finally falling to the seafloor. 

Uncovering these stories is a lot of work. It requires doing the same thing over and over while maintaining an attention to detail. Scientists love order and methods, but aboard an oceanographic vessel, order is the aspiration not the norm. The truth is that science is a human endeavour, and like all human endeavours, it is bound by human bodies, minds, and spirits. Science is as much rational, calculating, and careful as it is seasick scientists putting together DIY solutions to the multitude of unexpected problems encountered at sea. It is as much attention to detail as it is impromptu dance parties in the laboratory to keep spirits high. The human element of science: the exhaustion and mistakes; the humour and care; the frustration and collaboration are infrequently described, but they are ever-present in the production of science.

Mud People

The "Mud People" sampled a box core at our first station offshore Vigo. We are after the recent fossil record of fish preserved in seafloor mud. Our goal is to compare the fish population from a few centuries to thousand years ago with modern fisheries catch data. Athina (center) is researching fish now and in the past to improve predictions of future fisheries. Dick (right) slices samples of the core we will study back in the lab into a bag being held open by Meryem (left).

Return to Vigo

It is typical early in a cruise to discover what works and doesn’t. We had several problems yesterday that that we could fix and some we couldn’t. We need to filter many liters of seawater for plankton and ocean chemistry, but our pumps and filtering system had their leaks. Plumber’s tape came to the rescue to plug up all the joints in the filtration system! Two other problems required returning to shore early this morning. We had ripped some of our nets on the first deployment, nets we need to capture large, active animals like pteropod snails. The solution: get a sewing machine from the Vigo equipment shop to sew up the rents. We also hoped that an electrician could fix a problem with one of the thrusters—a propeller than helps the ship stay in the same spot in a rolling sea. The picture shows the tugboat that helped us limp back into port because of the damaged thruster. Alas, that was one thing the Vigo engineer couldn’t fix since a grinding noise deep in the propeller shaft suggests dying bearings that require a major overhaul. So, we are back to sea without the thruster system for this cruise. 

Weather

We are sailing in mixed weather—one moment fog and the next overcast skies, sun or something in between. The ocean is mostly free of white caps and the ship heaves about in the long-period swell. Last night there was a wave train where I actually slid head-to-toe in my bunk—which is oriented across the beam of the ship. My bunk-mate Stergios is in the upper bunk and is worried about rolling out of bed onto the floor! We are all apprehensive about avoiding Hurricane Ernesto in our transit through the Gulf Stream in a couple days. The forecast has Ernesto moving up the eastern seaboard of North America following the warm water of the Gulf Stream. The storm will then fall apart by Thursday in the Iceland-Scotland Sea. We hope to be able to sneak past the remnants of the storm later in the week without being battered too much.

The marine planktonic calcifiers

The word plankton represents all microscopic organisms that live in the surface ocean without the capacity to swim against ocean currents. And some of these microorganisms build shells of calcium carbonate. Those are known as marine planktonic calcifiers. 

There are different hypotheses to explain why they invest their energy on calcification, such as protection against predators, photodamage, viral/bacterial attacks, buoyancy control and habitat expansion. And others that reflect the interplay between biomineralization, seawater chemistry and climate.  

The ocean capacity to uptake CO ₂  is largely a result of its alkalinity, which is mostly made up by carbonate minerals after reacting with seawater. In the open sea, these minerals’ origin is mostly from the tests of these marine planktonic calcifiers. And in terms of carbonate production contribution there are three main groups: coccolithophores, which are algae, with around 200 living species; foraminifera, which are protists, with around 50 living species; and the free-swimming gastropods, known as pteropods, with around 25 living species. While the first two are not able to swim at all, some species of the last group have the capacity to vertically migrate on daily basis to avoid being eaten by predators and for hunting. 

Some of these pelagic calcifiers have been existing for hundreds of million years. Their history spans episodes of major tectonic plates reorganization, global atmospheric and oceanic circulation changes, varying sea levels and the last cataclysmic bolide impact. Nowadays, they are under anthropogenic climate change pressure, threatening their thermal tolerance (ocean warming), respiration (deoxygenation), nutrient availability (stratification) and calcification rates (ocean acidification). 

First photo is the foraminifera Neogloboquadrina pachyderma, against of coccolithophores and a large fecal pellet, and the second photo is the coccolithophore Coccolithus pelagicus. Both photos were taken with a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) from a sediment trap in the Iceland plateau. Third photo is the pteropod Limacina sp. and some foraminifera Globigerina bulloides.

Swayed to sleep 

The repetitive tasks of the laboratory are put on hold as we make our way to the next sampling station. With my mind and hands unoccupied, my attention shifts from the details of the laboratory to the physical sensations of being at sea. I am swayed to a state of sleepiness as the ship is cradled in the arms of mother ocean. Her waves swaying me back and forth. The constant movement contradicting the ship's solid steel. I am too small to resist, too far from shore to feel grounded. The constant humming of the ship's engine is drowned out by the waves' swishing song. My eyes grow heavy as I am sung and swayed to sleep.

Resilience!

We tend to think of resilience as a human trait, as we adjust to a changing climate, a global pandemic, and an unstable geopolitical situation. However, resilience is something that the animal world employs regularly.

Humans love to complain about the weather, as we go inside and adjust the thermostat. But to a pelagic seabird like the shearwater, there is only outside. Wind and rain must be managed, maybe by flying higher or lower, or, in the case of a big storm, by sensing the change early enough to fly away from danger.

 Other animals manage more routine change. A mussel or barnacle that lives in the tidal zone is regularly submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide (in the photo!). This kind of environmental variation limits the animals that can live in such a place as it more broadly drives adaptation and evolution.

Like us, the living ocean world is also trying to adapt to the added stressors of extreme and unpredictable weather and abundant microplastics and other pollutants.

The BIOCAL expedition will shed light on the oceanic and biotic response to these additional stressors by sampling water from the surface to far below the photic zone, and sediment from the seafloor. We will identify changes in biodiversity by comparing our results with those recorded on past expeditions. And we will identify how deeply microplastic has invaded oceanic ecosystems. These data will be shared with the scientific community, the public, and the people who make the policies around fisheries, plastics pollution, and the excess greenhouse gases driving warming.

Nature has been practicing resilience for millions of years. Individual animals (and plants!) try out different strategies and species are rewarded, through successful reproduction, with survival. BIOCAL research will document some of Nature's newest challenges, and we hope, its successes, since nature will never stop adapting to change. 

Photograph of mussels attached to the pier in Vigo, way down near the water line, and a plant that has adapted well to its unusual home. Also note the red hull of the B/O Sarmiento de Gamboa.

Beauty in emptiness

Today water filtering was less painfully slow. We were sampling at an oligotrophic station, a site with little nutrients, meaning less particles and plankton were clogging up the filters. During my break, I looked down at the water and took in its beautiful blue -- a deep blue approaching indigo-violet. I had spent the entire morning filtering 2 litres of seawater at a time. In the beaker, the water was transparent and uninspiring; the filter was white and lifeless, a stark contrast from the brownish-green mosaic of the previous days. As I stepped onto the deck of the ship, the empirical emptiness observed in my clean filters and speedy filtration contradicted the metaphysical fullness of its deep blue beauty. Its beauty made possible by its emptiness. Its emptiness influencing how it absorbed light and reflected colour. Its emptiness filling me with life and wonder. 

Ebb and flow

Life aboard the ship has provided many opportunities to watch the waves. The other day, we found ourselves admiring a tranquil ocean; the waves barely rippled across the surface. If it were any calmer, it would create an illusion of skating atop a mirror (1st image). It was a pleasant break from the waves that pummeled the boat with such an intensity that it made it impossible to put on a pair of pants without hopping and stumbling across the floor. Much like the changing ocean waves, I find that my perception of time is constantly changing. Sometimes it feels slow, rapid, chaotic, serene, or any combination thereof. In fact, just about any adjective you can think of likely describes our team’s grapple with time thus far.

Up till now, our sampling sites have been slightly more than a day’s travel away. These days of travel serve as ‘recovery’ days, giving us a much-needed reprieve from the fast-paced days of sample collection and processing. Time feels slow, lazy, and drawn-out. Among the scientists, sleeping in and taking multiple siestas are commonplace. Reading a book poses unique challenges; the sway of the boat quickly lulls you into a deep state of relaxation. Reading, an activity which I normally spend hours enjoying, rarely lasts longer than 30 minutes before I find myself in the supine position, fast asleep. It feels as if we have been transported to another dimension, one in which minutes feel like hours.

Once at the sampling stations, we are whisked away into another alternate dimension where hours feel like minutes. At yesterday’s hyper-station, we deployed different scientific instruments eleven times. As soon as one instrument was recovered, another was deployed. On a typical day, it takes hours before the equipment resurfaces and is returned to the deck. It makes for an extremely long work day. We began at 10:00 UTC and didn't finish until 6:00 UTC the following morning. While the equipment is deployed, there is no waiting around. The plankton net traps, recovered sediments, and water samples must be rapidly processed for preservation purposes. Needless to say, there is a lot of running around. Sometimes, however, the work moves at an excruciatingly slow pace. Earlier, I watched over filtering water samples; I could not help but think that there must exist caves that form speleothems at a faster rate. Sometimes sample processing doesn't last long enough. In the microscope room, we didn't have nearly enough time to admire a sparkly sea dragon before returning it to the ocean (2nd image). Sometimes, I look up from whatever it is that I have been doing and wonder where all the time has gone. As the hours pass by, it can feel either annoyingly fast or exceptionally slow.

All in all, the ebb and flow of time has encouraged me to adopt a ‘go-with-the-flow’ mentality, and to embrace the fleeting moments as well as the lengthy ones.

Moving centuries in minutes

We are using niskin bottles arranged in a circular rosette to sample water at different depths. One by one, they close as they ascent from the ocean depths. From the surface to the bottom and back, the bottles are full and on deck within two hours after their release. Sampling quickly begins. I grab the flask from its Styrofoam holder and walk around to bottle N1. I struggle to line-up the tiny hole in the circular lock with the pin in the nozzle to open the water flow. I give it a big push. The balance of brute force and patience is rewarded with a burst of cold water from 1300 meters, a refreshing relief in the sticky heat of the confined deck space. One by one I open the bottles, ascending 100 meters at a time. From the dark cold depths to the warmer sunlit surface, my fingers meet water that has not seen the surface for a century or more. Although this may seem old, it is young for deep water. This water was starting its journey along the dark depths of the deep ocean. From the North Atlantic depths it would have flowed southward toward Antarctica, and then looped northward towards the Indian or North Pacific oceans, where in a 1000 years or so it would come back to the sunlit surface.

What lies beneath the surface of the sea?

Many have asked this question throughout human history. The Deep Blue, the one of myths and legends, the one that impresses and instills fear, is also an oasis of life, essential to our planet—and to us as well. The waters just below the surface, still touched by sunlight, harbor a great diversity of organisms. It is here that we search for the small, the tiny, the minuscule—the plankton so vital to our oceans. These creatures degrade, recycle, produce, nourish, synthesize, transform, and sustain life. Whether they are microscopic monsters or delicate beauties, they never cease to ignite the imagination.

Here we find acantharians, which resemble tiny suns, radiating their rays beneath the water's surface. We also encounter pteropods, those sea butterflies with transparent shells through which we can see their hearts beating, and foraminifera that look like grains of popcorn. Occasionally, without intending to, we come across creatures straight out of a science fiction movie, like the blue sea dragon. Measuring barely half a centimeter, this titan —compared to the other organisms— was released and returned to the waters off the Azores, where we found it.

All these organisms coexist in the waters we traverse during the BIOCAL expedition. Some are found at different depths, some are more numerous than others, but studying them allows us to take the pulse of our planet and better understand the global impact of our way of life.

The floating islands

Yesterday we crossed the Azores islands, the last piece of land that we are going to see over the next few weeks. Azores archipelago is located at the fringe of the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, which makes it a good spot to study the planktonic life of oligotrophic waters (poor in nutrients).

These islands made me think about my current home. For two years I've been living on a small island surrounded by warm Atlantic waters, where I’ve been conducting my PhD fieldwork. The ocean is the only biogeographical barrier isolating the island’s life from the rest of the world. The isolation and the small area enable us to pay attention to details and to understand the local processes. People who do research on oceanic islands tend to say that these environments serve as natural laboratories to understand macro scale processes.

Life aboard the Sarmiento de Gamboa is like living on a floating island. Our eyes can reach the horizon but there is nowhere to go beyond the ship’s sides. We are in a micro universe that is floating from low to high latitudes, like crabs hitchhiking in floating Sargasso seaweed.

Day after day you are familiarised with the faces inhabiting this small "land", while we collect samples from the ocean. You start noticing when the sea is changing through the sounds of the ship or the gravity force acting between one wave and the next one. Every day we face different conditions and we need to adapt, because there is nowhere to go in a floating island, only the next sampling station.

What’s Earth’s Mantle doing in my Foraminifer Ooze?

Our expedition has been tracing the production of marine microfossils from their growth in the surface ocean to their final resting place in seafloor sediment.  So we have regularly collected a big chunks of the seafloor (in so-called “box” cores) and brought it up to the ship’s deck to admire and see what skeletons survived and which did not compared to the organisms in our plankton nets. Yesterday, we got more than we bargained for…

As the sun was setting, we opened the box corer to reveal a carpet of foraminifer ooze—a type of tan watery sand (an “ooze”) made almost exclusively of the intricately complex shells of singled-celled planktonic foraminifera. We also spotted pteropod snail shells and fish earbones--the latter causing Athina’s heart to skip a beat at the sight of so many fishy fossils. What was seemingly out of place in our bite of the seafloor were numerous black pebbles and cobbles each unusually heavy and glittery. Later, under better lighting and my hand lens, the rocks were revealed to be chunks of the ocean crust, particularly a glinting green rock called gabbro that crystallized from magma in the mantle and low crust—maybe 6-10 km below the ocean floor. 

Inspection of detailed maps of the mid ocean ridge shows that the mantle and deep crust rocks are not so unexpected at this location as I had thought. Here, crust is slowly being pulled apart along giant fractures that expose large slabs of the mantle in what would ordinarily be a place of volcanic eruptions. Our creamy foraminifer ooze apparently came from the foot of a cliff of exposed mantle that periodically fell in little rockslides down the slope and into “our” sample of the seafloor. Imagine that, our expedition managed to plumb the plumping of the oceans!

Captions: 1. Glittery gabbro—a chunk to the deep ocean crust. 2. Box core filled with tan foraminifer ooze and black chunks of the Earth’s lower crust. 3. Arturo admiring our gabbro sample.

More sediments and some night guests!

I was one of the mud people but now we rotate our position, so everyone will have the opportunity to learn everything. I had never worked before with mud and I had never imagined how fascinating could be. I suppose working on the deck plays a big role, when we were able to enjoy the Atlantic sunsets, in comparison working in the ship's laboratories, inside. The mud tells you a story, and if you are patient enough, you can learn the history of an area. Perhaps not the history that we are used to learn at school about important politicians or big rebellions, but the history of nature! So, the other day, I found my first fish otolith! Otoliths are the ear bones of fish and are species-specific. With a nice collection of otoliths, you can obtain information about the history of the fish community. Even if finding that otolith and being in the microscope laboratory meant that I lost the opportunity to see whales' spouting that the rest of the crew witnessed, I was still super excited to find my first otolith!

Last Saturday night, we stopped to collect a core that was even better than going out on the town in Barcelona. Nights at sea are always exciting. The other night, ~15 squids approached the light of the boat, and the cooks of the ship started jigging to get some fresh food. They weren’t so successful, but it was pretty fun to see how this delicate creature's visit disturbed the peace of the smoking area, where crew and scientists were chilling. Yesterday we also had some jellyfish visiting our bongo nets - after saying hello, we put them back in the ocean. That night, more unexpected visitors kept calling from the deep- these were mid-water fish, including a gourgeous bristlemouth with a basket full of teeth and light-producing organs on its belly. We were lucky to observe its weird dark beauty. Finally, at the end of the night our box core came up empty... no mud for us! We know these things happen and we know how to deal with them with big smiles and energy for the next stations!

BBQ and whales

Last night, all scientists and crew members gathered outside to enjoy a BBQ dinner on the deck, just as we sailed over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (slide 1)! Morales from the crew grilled zucchini, pork ribs, and sausages, while other crew members set up a table of fries, cheese, ham, and more (slide 2). Everyone talked, enjoyed the delicious meal, and soaked in the gorgeous weather. By night, a lot of the scientists and crew danced to Spanish music in strobe light, laughing as we all tried to keep our balance while the ship was swaying side to side. This was a great moment for the scientists and crew to take a break from work and get to know each other as we sailed toward our next station.

This morning, scientists and crew came together again on the starboard side of the ship to watch whales. This was an incredible sight to see, as a lot of us have been eagerly waiting to see whales along our transect. There were pods of Pilot whales, black/dark grey in color, seen close to the surface, where they are known to be active. These whales are also known to be stongly bonded within their pods, doing everything together, including traveling, hunting, and resting. We watched as the whales rested (logged) together at the surface (slide 3). We hope to see more beautiful sea creatures like these as we continue along our transect.

The ocean is angry!

The strong movements from the ocean make as feel like we are sleeping on the back of a furious dragon, up and down, crossing over the waves. All inside de boat slides, falls, make noise… a reminder of how small we are under the force of mother nature. We all meet downstairs triying to play games and pass the time kiping our minds away from the sea sickness that some of us are alredy feeling it stronger. We skipped station 7 and follow our rute in the way to station 8, close to Ireland.

Before bed, wishing to say goodbye to the angry Antlantic Ocean, we visit the two brave members from the crew that make guard at that time on the bridge, guarding the boat while we all sleep. All is dark inside, and the high we can only appreciate the white from the foam when the waves break.

Bowling

From the previous post, you have now been informed that for the past couple of days we have been going through some stormy weather. Another implication of the agitated sea than the difficulty/impossibility to conduct the sampling is food related. This difficulty is not exclusively due to sea sickness, which is quite rough for several people, but also to the physical act of eating in the dining area. The round peas rolling across the plate, the swaying soup landing onto the tray mixing with the bread and the water from the glass that tipped over, a beautiful mess! The viewing of Big Lebowski yesterday makes me see the colliding trays and chairs as a big game of bowling during mealtime, and that’s pretty fun! However, if the simple fact of eating can appear to be difficult, it leads me to wonder about the other aspects of work and life on the boat that cannot be cancelled as we did station 7. For instance, cooking in these conditions must not only be difficult, but the boiling water for the pasta we had at lunch must also potentially be dangerous. The people working in the bridge, where the irregular motion of the boat is felt tenfold as it is at the very top, must be jumping up and down, sliding left to right as they bring everyone to the next station. These are only some examples of what I can imagine are the many tough tasks under stormy conditions on a boat at sea. As we keep going towards the North, these realities of being on the boat under different weather conditions will become increasingly familiar, but at least for the rest of today, we can hopefully sample at Station 8!

Oceanographic instrumentation

Last night, we decided to navigate to the west and look for better sea conditions in the opposite direction of the storm, so that we can continue with the job. We are at latitude 57º North, and we all wear warmer clothes.

Station #8 is a hyper-station, which means deploying all devices day and night. The instrumentation deployment is run by the UTM personnel and the crew. To trace marine planktonic calcifiers we are divided in three groups: water, plankton tows and sediments.

The first group, water, uses the CTD-rosette to collect water samples and measure various physical and chemical parameters of seawater at different depths. Once the CTD is on deck, we collect the water from the Niskin bottles (cylindrical bottles to collect water samples from specific depths) and filter it to analyse coccolithophore’s composition. The second group, plankton tows, use mainly the bongo net and the multinet, to capture the bigger foraminifera and pteropods at different depths. We deploy them during the day and at night because some species of plankton migrate on daily basis. The third group, sediments, uses the box core, multicore and the gravity core. The sediments are the resting place of planktonic calcifiers and by analysing them we can reconstruct previous community composition and past ocean conditions.

Since these organisms play a key role in the marine carbonate cycle, we are also trying to understand dissolution processes of sinking shells and grazing activity. For the flux particle we use the sediment traps, which are cylinders deployed at different depths with and hypersaline solution inside to capture sinking particles. And to understand the role of grazers we are running some experiments on board, that might be explained in following posts.

Captures: 1. CTD-rosette. 2. Bongo net. 3. Multinet and gravity core. 4. Multicore and box core. 5. Sediment trap.

There's more biodiversity to this than meets the sediment

Beneath the shimmering surface of the ocean, an invisible world of architects flourishes - calcifying organisms like coccolithophores, foraminifera, and pteropods, whose delicate calcium carbonate structures quietly shape the marine realm. Alongside them, a vast diversity of life thrives in the water column - phytoplankton blooming under the sun, zooplankton drifting with the currents, and microscopic creatures playing out their roles in the grand dance of oceanic life. Yet, only a fraction of this rich biodiversity ever reaches the deep. As calcifying organisms live out their ephemeral lives, they contribute not just to the food web but also to the carbon cycle, their tiny shells destined for a long, quiet journey to the ocean's floor.

However, the voyage from surface to sediment is fraught with challenges. As these shells and organic remnants sink, they are subjected to the forces of dissolution and degradation. Much of what once thrived in the upper waters is lost, dissolved into the ocean's chemistry or broken down by hungry bacteria before it can settle. What remains - what escapes dissolution and remineralization - gathers as marine snow, slowly falling into the deep, a mere whisper of the vibrant life once flourishing above. Only the most resilient pieces make it to the sediment, forming layers of carbonate ooze that archive the ocean's history, recording the biodiversity that once bloomed far above in the sunlit waters.

But this ancient cycle of life and death, sediment and preservation, faces profound disruption as anthropogenic forces reshape the ocean’s fragile balance. Melting ice introduces lighter waters, altering currents and stratification, while calcifying organisms, once capable of producing robust shells, now craft lighter, thinner structures to float at their preferred habitats. In an increasingly acidified ocean, these fragile shells dissolve before they can even begin their descent, erasing much of the biodiversity we encounter in the water column before it ever has a chance to leave its mark on the ocean floor. What reaches the sediment now is different than what once was - an ever-fainter echo of the diverse and beautiful life that the ocean harbours. Yet, for now, beneath the waves, there remains more biodiversity to this than meets the sediment.

A "Fresh Gale"

The ship is heaving around and it is challenging to stand at the lab bench and write out sample labels for tomorrow. We are in a “fresh Gale” where the winds create streamers of “spindrift” down the wave fronts and some waves pile up into mountains of foam. The kittiwakes—a type of gull—love it and flash through the wave troughs, sometimes only inches above the water. The waves are 4-5 m high from trough to crest and the water is a chilly 12°C (photo of the rough sea).  The ship occasionally bashes into a wave front sending a tremor through the vessel—our home. 

Now and then there is a crash from somewhere—just now the benches in the CTD hanger decided to slide into the wall with a bang.  Chairs in the computer lab spin and slide, even though the wheels are taken off. We are buttoned up—all the outside doors are dogged down and you don’t go outside without letting somewhat know in case you disappear into the roiling ocean. Walking down the passageways in the ship is a challenge—there are grab bars along one wall that help, but everyone lurches from side to side in a shuffling walk and tries not to fall over. 

We are due at Station 10 tomorrow about midday just north of the Faeroe Islands. The weather maps promise the salvation of calm seas and light winds. The storm front is a sharp divide running up the Iceland-Faeroe channel.  We are all glued to “Windy” the app that shows storm conditions at sea. Our last station produced a lovely box core, scattered with ice-carried stones from Scotland (see picture of the top of our box core and the other of our Core-sampling team). Our instruments and nets show that life is abundant in the upper layer of the ocean. We hope for more of the same at the Faeroes and then at points north along the coast of Norway.

The color of marine plankton diversity

We are at both the sampling mid-point and duration of our BIOCAL expedition and everyone is still enjoying it. To live and work together on a research vessel is always a unique experience that is different every time. It depends on many factors and I am happy that on this BIOCAL expedition people are working and living together well despite the tiredness and the roughness of the sea conditions. The work and life with the crew and UTM members, the captain, the officers, the students and the cooks (incredible) are great. 

An astonished observation that I realized only coming to this cruise was not only how the plankton community changes so drastically and sometime unexpectedly in our many different locations, but the visual color of marine plankton biodiversity changes. We saw bright and diverse colors at 39N and more uniform with different tonalities of oranges at 59N.  What are the main factors modulating these changes? How the rapid ongoing climate is changing the ocean?

The conditions are rough today with big waves and when that happens, the ship suddenly moves and gravity gets weird. In fact, I had a small accident when having breakfast falling on a side from the chair! It woke me up!

IRD: Iceberg-drafted debris

As we move northward, the box core has been revealing the history of the area. We have been finding pebbles sitting in the mud, which we know were carried out to sea by icebergs. These pebbles are called "dropstones"

In the last sampling station#10 we have found five different types of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks: basalt, granite, schist, red sandstone and quartzite. The basalt comes from the nearby Faroe archipelago where a stack of more than 6 km of basaltic lavas form the peaks of the islands. The other rocks are typical of Norway or Scotland, suggesting that some of the dropstones are far-traveled.

Dilutant grazers

We’re setting up an experiment to learn more about which phytoplankton gets eaten by zooplankton grazers (picture) and, as importantly, whether calcium carbonate shells of single celled algae dissolve in the grazer’s guts.

Zooplankton is removed from some seawater samples and added to others for comparison. The questions of grazing and shell dissolution are relevant for both the food web and the carbon cycle. 

The Arctic Seas

This day we crossed into the Arctic seas. We are entering the complex of marine basins between Norway, Iceland and Greenland and the gateway to the Arctic Ocean—the Fram Strait. They are exotic places—the Boreas Basin, Vøring Plateau, and the Greenland Sea—storied in the tales of the whale fishery, Icelandic sagas and Arctic explorers. As we sail north of the Faeroe Islands and their layer cake of glacially carved basalts, we have reached the Norwegian Sea. The ocean has a light chop but we thank our woolen clothes and heavy jackets in the chill wind. We and our Barcelona sensibilities have not seen anything yet, of course, since colder climes are still to come. Northern Gannets—a jet-plane of a bird, pure white with black wingtips—dive on the fish scared to the surface by the ship’s passage. The sea is productive here and looks green compared to the royal blue of the Azores. Patrizia reports the surface ocean is full of dinoflagellates and pteropods. Plankton love the long summer light and productive water even if it is cold to us. Still the plankton are small and have grown fast for the summer is already waning. We will set up later today in the deep Norwegian basin for Station 11, thankful for the calm weather despite the chilly bite in the air.

Tomorrow, we make for the Voring Plateau off central Norway and our station 12. Storms await us, and a big one, developing over the Lotofen Basin north of us, may give us grief in a few days. From there it is a skip over the Mohn Ridge into the Boreas Basin and Greenland Sea. We may get a glimpse of the icy mountains of Svalbard known for its polar bears and frozen seed bank of the World’s plants. The plan is to sample the ice-cold waters emerging from the Arctic through the Fram Strait.  At that point we will really need our wool hats, gloves and layers for the water temperature will plunge from what will seem like the balmy 11-12°C to just above freezing. Our t-shirts and shorts, so comfortable in Galicia, will be forgotten in the Arctic blasts.

The aurora has been gleaming the last few nights in the bright starfield beckoning us northward.  Adventure awaits!

Decision time

Appearances are deceiving. It is a glorious morning on the Norwegian Sea, but a big storm is brewing that will cover the whole basin from Greenland to Scandinavia. The cruise plan cannot stay as it is since the storm will batter us too much for marine operations. To it is decision time: What do we change? Where do we hide? Do we run for Svalbard?  Do we hug the Norwegian coast or retreat to a fjord? Staying at sea does not look appealing with projected wave heights of 5-7 m and wind gusts that will be well into the “gale” category. A direct drive to Svalbard would be several days of that…not a pleasant option….

Above the Arctic Circle

I am writing this post from a position north of the Arctic Circle! Currently we are at 69N and heading across the opening into the Barents Sea to points much farther north. There is a storm that is developing and we are hoping to reach Svalbard without too much rocking and rolling. It is strange to spend so much time on the ocean and not sea other ships, or (and this is a good thing!) any litter in the sea!

BIOCAL has been following the North Atlantic Current since we left the Azores. This current is an extension of the Gulf Stream that flows along North America. Because we have been in this river of warmer waters, temperatures have not changed much. We have seen water temperatures of 12 ºC and air temperatures to match for quite a while now. It will be interesting to see how this changes when we reach the "end" of the river, around 79N. Here is where the relatively warm waters delivered to the high latitudes from the tropics sink to form North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). It is also very close to the top of our spinning earth. Until I experienced the clouds that regularly are above us, like a skull cap keeping earth's head warm, I didn't quite grasp how much smaller the globe is so far north. Having viewed this area mostly on Mercator projection maps, I didn't quite grasp that weather whizzes around the earth much faster here. Since we are all glued to Windy.com (thank you, Windy!) to see what storms we are in for, these patterns have become much apparent. Try it for yourselves and watch how quickly these storms move through. And how strong the winds are! It makes for very consistently inconsistent weather. 

Even though the air temperature hasn't changed much, and the water temperature hasn't changed much, the world we observe beneath the sea sure has changed a lot. Sediments from our earlier stations, along the Mid Atlantic Ridge, were dominated by the calcifying organisms we seek to study -among them benthic and planktonic foraminifera (and a host of other creatures!) living far from the influence of land. The traps in the water column also picked up pelagic (open ocean) creatures. But once we got close to land in the Faroe Islands and Norway, the sediments changed. In these hemipelagic (half land, half sea) environments, the sediments hold records from both worlds. Here the sediments contain marine organisms like sponges, as well as our calcifying foraminifera friends, mixed in with pieces of land (fine sand, glacial dropstones) that have been  weathered and transported far from their origins. One study suggests that the rivers and glaciers of northern Norway have deposited so much sediment since northern hemisphere glaciation began about 2.4 million years ago that the continental margin has moved 150 km offshore. That´s an average of 6 cm per year! Think about how much sediment the rivers and glaciers must transport to accomplish that kind of construction!

I am very much looking forward to our next and last major station, off Svalbard. Here I think the sea will surprise us again. This is where the warm waters sink, but it's also where the Mid Atlantic Ridge nears its end. This feature, which looks a lot like a zipper, ends around here. But even so the earth is not resting. Here, even though the sea floor doesn't spread, there is activity -methane seeps out of the seafloor, supporting a chemosynthetic community that includes tubeworms. We will soon document how well our calcifying friends fare in such an environment!

The decision is made

This morning (5th September), it was the waves that woke me. Still snug in my bed, my head kept bumping gently against the headboard. It was time to get up and face the reality: we hadn’t sought refuge in a Norwegian fjord overnight! The call was made to push on and reach Svalbard as quickly as possible. After yesterday’s setbacks—plankton nets left uncast due to strong winds and some equipment losses—we're preparing to face the huge storm that stands between us and Svalbard. On the bright side, we’ll reach the end of our latitudinal transect in 48 hours. The downside? Forty-eight hours in a washing machine—it's going to be a long ride!

Gale, Very Rough Sea

72º North, 4h UTC, the Sun is up in the Artic Circle. After one hour looking by the window, I decide to get up and go to the bridge. The captain, the first official and the apprentice are silent looking at the sea. I ask permit to enter and join them. The scenario is beautiful but intimidating. The captain is trying to change ship’s course as carefully as possible towards our destination in the west coast of Svalbard, but he must maintain it between 10-15º since the waves come from the port side. I check the wind speed and waves sizes to measure the situation using Beaufort and Douglas scales, we are in Gale and Rough Sea Conditions. Estimated Time Arrival: 7th September 21h UTC. 

In the photo, the vertical yellow is the planned course, and the black dashed line is the real course that they had to maintain in order to avoid major movements of the ship.

Radium sampling

Joanna and Beth (Rowan University) have been collecting radium samples to track the TransPolar Drift Stream (TPD), which is a major current in the Arctic Ocean. Radium activity suggests continental shelfs inputs of nutrients, carbon, and trace metals that support primary producers (plankton). Samples collected along the northern part of the transect (between Svalbard and Norway) will help identify regions that are most strongly influenced by continental shelf inputs, which may have rapidly change during the last years.

To collect a radium sample, we first need 60L of surface water taken from the ships underway system (photo 1). We then filter the water through a cartridge packed with manganese-oxide coated acrylic fiber (photo 2), which scavenges radium as the water filters through. These samples will be taken back to the Environmental Science research lab at Rowan University, where they will be analyzed for Ra-228 and Ra-226 activity using a gamma detector. In the 3rd phoho, Joanna struggles to weigh the water as the ship rocks back and forth. 

Top of the gradient celebrations!

Hello, hello! Today was pretty intense on the Sarmiento de Gamboa, let me take you through our day. It more or less started with the beginning of the sampling at Station 16, the northernmost of our journey, very close to Svalbard. The consecutive deployments kept crew, technicians and scientists very busy for pretty much the whole night and day! Luckily, we also got to celebrate not one but two birthdays for our favorite oiler Serafin and our favorite post-doc Mika, enjoying all together pintxos and tarta de Santiago! Happy birthday to you both! After this intense, and dare, I say, happy day, we are entering the final week of this campaign, apprehending the announced storm!

Chalk Armor

Sometimes, as scientists, we become so absorbed in our research that we begin to take a lot of concepts and ideas for granted. In our desire to locate relevant, goal-oriented data, many fascinating and wonderful details go overlooked. On our way to Iceland, I have had ample time to reflect on what I know, which has led to some profound revelations. Take, for example, foraminifera. These small sand-sized creatures are single-cellular animals. They don’t have organs like us, they don’t have brains, and they don’t have multiple cells to carry out specific functions. Despite lacking many features unique to multi-celled beings, they can create amazingly complex armor made of calcium carbonate, the same molecule found in chalk. My personal favorite is Elphidium Crispum (pictured above). The appearance of this “armor” varies from species to species and is often a reflection of its environment.

Viewing the ocean from the surface, it is easy to forget that the ocean is more than just a bathtub full of water. Some regions are saltier than others, others colder, and some have little to no nutrients. The ocean environment is further complicated by the different pressures experienced at different depths. For example, a depth of 5000 meters below sea level experiences a pressure that is 500 times greater than at the surface. That’s A LOT of pressure! And those wonderful foraminifera, no larger than a grain of sand, with chalk for armor, are capable of surviving at those depths. To say the least, they are very robust creatures! Furthermore, the “armor” – or shells – of deceased foraminifera, which come from all different depths within the ocean, occasionally accumulate on the ocean floor where they are preserved for hundreds of thousands – and even millions – of years. On this expedition, when we process sea floor samples containing specimens of foraminifera, we have to be cautious when handling the sediment to make sure that we don't crush the shells. Foraminiferal shells are robust and can withstand a great amount of pressure, but become extremely fragile in a vastly different environment. It just goes to show you that even the smallest changes in environment, for any creature, has a non-insignificant impact on amplifying strengths (or weaknesses) and eliminating weaknesses (or strengths).

Gale, Very Rough Sea II

I am writing this post with my computer sitting in a sofa and blocking myself with my feet to a fixed table in front, while everything is moving and crashing. And eventually, a bigger wave reminds what was forgotten to be lashed down. Yesterday, even the CTD shifted (see the second photo). It has been two days of constant movement on board, where daily basic life activities become a gymkhana.

We left Svalbard knowing we were going to face a storm before arriving to Iceland. However, soon we will leave these conditions behind. We expect to see the coast of Iceland this afternoon and find refugee. Looking forward to the last sampling station!

Riding the waves into calm waters and clear northern night skies

The North Atlantic showed us its power with an unforgiving storm—waves crashing over the deck, winds howling, and the ship tossed in every direction. For days, we navigated through this chaos, the crew working tirelessly against the elements. Eventually, we found relief in the lee of Iceland, where the waves calmed and the ship finally steadied.

That night, as if to celebrate our survival, the sky cleared. Above us, the aurora borealis danced with breathtaking intensity, its greens and purples lighting up the night. The brightness of the aurora was so vivid, it cast a soft glow over the water, reflecting off the now-peaceful ocean. It was a mesmerizing contrast—a reminder of how quickly the sea can go from wild to tranquil.

For the crew, it was a moment of quiet reflection. After hours of battling nature’s force, standing under the brilliance of the Northern Lights felt like a reward. We paused our work briefly, eyes fixed on the sky, letting the beauty of the moment sink in. The challenges of oceanographic research are many, but moments like these remind us why we’re here—witnessing the raw power and beauty of the ocean and the skies in all their moods.

Azores meet Svalbard

I awoke yesterday to find us cruising on a flat ocean toward the point into Reykjavik harbor.  It had been choppy at night with a familiar roll of the ship. Another storm is brewing south of us and promises 7 m waves for the start of the next expedition.  Now we are tucked into the harbor in Reyjkavik.  There was anticipation of stepping onto land for the first time in a month.  As we tied up, the city beckoned—a walk amid the tide of life of a city, the opportunity to stretch one’s legs, and, of course, a beer! After a walk around Reykjavik, returning to the ship is familiar home and crawling into one’s bunk after a night of dancing is comforting.

What did we find?  Our science is encapsulated in the mud we collected.  We have repacked the box core samples in the walk-in refrigerator, double bagging the mud to stop leaks.  There is tan foraminifer ooze from the Azores full of foraminifera, coccoliths and pteropods—all the calcareous plankton implied by BIOCAL.  Samples from farther north, starting with the Faeroes show increasing glacial influences--dark green mud and rounded, scratched rocks once carried by ice streams and icebergs.  There are still calcareous shells in these Arctic samples, but they do not dominate the way they do farther south. Instead, the mud is full of sponges and polychaete worms all feasting on the green glop of diatoms settling from the surface.  Life is unexpectedly abundant off the coast of Spitsbergen with pteropods and star-like acantharians vainly trying to eat the vast numbers of diatoms, but neither of these has much of a presence in seafloor sediments.

Our instruments also record the contrast of tropical and high latitude oceans.  In the south, plankton love the deeper ocean a few hundred meters below the surface where nutrients abound and there is a complex web of life.  The surface ocean is royal blue because there are so few plankton there.  Yet we still have stunning images like the purple-blue nudibranchs and siphonophores in the sargassum.  Farther north the wealth of life is all in the surface.  The ocean here is various shades of green with different shades for diatoms and dinoflagellates. Those late summer storms that pummeled us have pervasively mixed the upper ocean and life is terrifically abundant.

In the 1790’s Alexander Humboldt traveled the Andes and took in the gradients form jungle to snowline on Andean Mountains. In his writings he remarks on the majesty of these big trends in life.  We have had the pleasure and privilege to see the same in the ocean.