Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, let’s take a deep breath now. Imagine, you are swimming in the ocean and, suddenly, your body is sinking, sinking and sinking. Imagine, you are sinking for hours and days. You reach the seafloor, where your body dissociates into a nutritious cloud of carbon. Eventually, this carbon is […]

Dear interested reader, family, colleagues and friends, we are the geologists (“The Kardashians of science” ~ Dr. Sheldon Cooper) on board during this Meteor expedition in the Atlantic Ocean. May you heard already that oceanic crust is built along the mid-ocean ridges – the longest volcanic mountain chain on our planet. Over time, the newly […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, safety is one of the most important requirements for our research cruise with the RV Meteor. It needs the expertise of the crew and strict rules for all people on board. In addition, all of us participate in exercises to be prepared in the case of emergency. There […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, after days of travelling and lab work, we arrived at our sampling station in the Atlantic Ocean (Image 1-4). Our schedule is meticulously prepaired, there is not much time for reports. But we want to let you know, that we are fine and excited about the next discoveries […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, we are still working with the samples of the first station in the Caribbean Sea and expect our arrival at the next station in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday night. Whenever we have a low and there is a need for motivation, we cast a quick look at […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, as mentioned in our last blog, we took water samples across 4000 m depth using the CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) – rosette sampler at our first station in the Caribbean Sea. Here, we are interested in the distribution of viruses, bacteria and protists (unicellular organisms) in the depth. The […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, we arrived at the first sampling station in the territorial waters of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Sea. During 60 hours of team work, we took water and sediment samples across 4000 m depth using three different systems: Water samples were taken from multiple water depths with […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, for the moment, let us focus on the water surface rather than the deep sea: We found stretches of brown algae across the ocean surface (Image 1). Free-floating brown algae like Sargassum are distributed worldwide in warm seas. In summer 2015 in the Caribbean, it was reported as […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, there are regular presentations given by our scientists on the RV Meteor (Image 1). The first presentation was given by the PhD student Alexandra Schönle from Cologne on her research topic “Protists in the Deep Sea”: How do protists (single-celled eukaryotes, which store DNA in a nucleus) survive […]

Dear interested reader, colleagues, friends and families, now we are already more than 48 hours at the Caribbean Sea. The laboratories are all set up (Image 1). Some of our scientists had some issues to adapt to the strong waves. Thanks to the doctor on board most of us feel better and we started to […]