Our lives, my life, have been halted in so many ways. But nothing, not even this, is black or white; and amidst the uncertainty and heartache, life keeps unfolding before our eyes. The blood-red and golden hues of every sunset keep shining just as magnificently, the reflections of the sunlight on the ocean keep dazzling […]
Tracing silicon to learn about diatoms
I first heard about the CUSCO project when Dr. Mar Fernández-Méndez approached my advisor, Dr. Jeffrey Krause, about sending a member of his lab to participate. The project itself is investigating how changes in a certain physical process, upwelling, will affect the world’s most productive marine fishery off the coast of Peru. Upwelling, for those […]
Watchman, watchman, do you copy?
It is 8 am in Peru, the sun is shining up in the sky and the boats are out on the water sampling. I relieve Toralf, who has been awake since 5am, from his position as watchman for the next 4 hours. Little by little the members of the KOSMOS-CUSCO team are trickling in and […]
The deep water hunt
32 µmol nitrate per liter – fantastic!! Better than I dared to dream. But let’s start from the beginning. The main objective of our study is to unravel how changes in upwelling intensity affect the food web and elemental cycling in the Peruvian upwelling system. Simply speaking, should upwelling intensity decline let’s say by 50% […]
AL534-2
The first official HOTMIC research cruise will be on F/S Alkor, and leaves from Malaga, Spain, on 05 March. The cruise track will follow the European coast from the Mediterranean Sea through the eastern Atlantic, Bay of Biscay, English Channel, and North Sea, to finish in the Baltic Sea at Kiel, Germany, on 01 April. […]
POS536
Technically, the first unofficial HOTMIC research cruise was conducted at the end of summer 2019, in the North Atlantic Gyre on F/S Poseidon. You can read more on their blog here and here.
It’s go time baby!
Water perspective by Sebastian Cantarero: After weeks of preparing, scheming, and building of suspense the day finally arrived! A group of highly trained secret agent scientists waited in the wee hours of the morning for word that Captain Jana and the sediment trap team was returning to dock, giving us the go ahead to start […]
from Game Blog
GAME 2020: Researching the effects of plastic debris on the community level
On Monday March 2nd, the preparation course for the new GAME project will start and also in 2020 the programme will focus again on the effects of plastic litter on marine life. However, while previous research in this field has almost exclusively focused on the impact of macro- or micro-sized debris on single organisms, GAME […]
The mesocosms touch water
The day started really early. At 5am we all met at the dive locker and brought everything we needed to the boats. Ropes, life vests, helmets, food, cable ties, lashing straps, lamps, fuel …. are we forgetting anything? We were all tired but at the same time excited. After 15 days in La Punta waiting […]
Be flexible
The KOSMOS-CUSCO project focuses on the links between upwelling intensity, primary productivity, export and trophic transfer efficiency in a changing climate. They seek to understand the reasons for the out of phase seasonal cycle between nutrient supply and phytoplankton productivity, an unexplained phenomenon unique to the Humboldt upwelling system. In a complementary way, Humboldt Tipping […]