Field Work

An important part of our work is collecting samples in the field. Almost all of our projects begin with a trip to a special place that provides an opportunity to learn about a particular organism, process, or habitat of interest. Sometimes, we target sites because they are unusual (like marine methane seeps or hot springs), allowing us to study edge cases that expand our understanding of how life and the earth coevolve. Other times, we target sites for precisely the opposite reason – because they represent large fractions of the earth and therefore teach us about globally relevant processes. Field work can be unpredictable, and we face challenges from bad weather to international shipping to octopuses that just won’t move out of the way. We rarely return with exactly what we set out to collect. But sometimes, when we are lucky, we return with something – an observation, a sample, or an insight – that is even better.