Hi, I am Emilia, marine ecologist. For me ocean is home. First of all, it is home for marine creatures, but temporarily also it is a home for us – visitors living on a ship for several weeks. We all feel that we are lucky ones to explore the realm of marine life in a wildlife of east Greenland coast, surrounded by ice, glaciers and their kids – icebergs.

I came here with a dream to get better understanding of the Arctic pelagic marine ecosystem functioning by performing observations by the underwater camera UVP – Underwater Vision Profiler. Meanwhile working on this beautiful scene of pristine Arctic landscape, by collecting comprehensive and massive amount of hydro-chemical measurements as a background for the interpretation of the ecological observations, I enjoy the ship life a lot. It is my 19^th cruise to the Arctic/sub-Arctic regions, but the first to this region and the first at such a comfortable ship as Maria S. Merian.

Going to work – at each station we make a vertical profile, when the UVP is attached to the bottom of the CTD rosette, so as it cuts the water as the first one to collect wonderful pictures of plankton and particles suspended in water column. By these we get the address- depth layer, latitude, and longitude of the plankton animals. What is more, we can find out the way of life those creatures live, as the coexisting with them particles shape their environmental conditions (the amount of light & food, water chemistry & turbidity). Whereas marine aggregates, known as marine snow, are something like the garbage of the system. By looking at their abundance and morphology, one can deduce, if the primary production (vegetarian food) was utilized efficiently by herbivores and transferred through the food web – then we have mostly their excrements, but little detritus. Or, if the production was kind of wasted, and consequently efficiently exported towards the sea bottom – then we observe massive snow storms in water column of remaining matter. This process may be speed up, because the dying phytoplankton cells often produce sugar compounds, which are sticky and enhance the aggregation. This transfer may also be sped by the ballasting of aggregates by mineral suspensions. By this way, when passing through the water those sticky organic aggregates clean the water from mineral particles, get bigger and heavier and drive the Biological Carbon Pump (BCP). In this way, sinking particles of organic matter produced in the upper ocean layers are the vehicles of carbon transport towards depths. Such flocs of matter do not only carry carbon towards the sea floor, but they also carry knowledge about the biophysical state of the pelagic ecosystems and functioning of their food webs. Let’s find out how it differs along fjords and across shelf!

E.T.