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.
Porcupine Abyssal Plain, North Atlantic Ocean
APERO23
June - July 2023 (6 weeks)
R/V Pourquois pas?
Chloé and Amanda teamed up with the Tamburini Lab at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography and used high-pressure bottles to compare rates of chemoautotrophy at sea level pressure vs. in situ pressures.
Orca Basin, Gulf of Mexico
ORCA23
July 2023 (2 weeks)
R/V Point Sur; ROV Global Explorer
Emily and Steffen, along with NASA’s Oceans Across Space and Time team, investigated a deep hypersaline anoxic basin to examine habitability changes across a rapid salinity boundary.
Western Australia Transient Lakes
WATL22
August 2022 (3 weeks)
Emily and Steffen, along with NASA’s Oceans Across Space and Time team, explored how pH affected microbial activity and methane metabolism in natural brine lakes.
Northwestern Mediterranean Sea
MIO22
June 2022 (3 weeks)
R/V Tethys II
Alejandro, Emily, Amanda, and Anne teamed up with the Tamburini group at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography to test high-pressure bottles that keep water samples (and microbes) from the deep ocean pressurized at the surface.
Great Boiling Spring, NV
GBS21
June 2021 (3 days)
Steffen explored hot springs in the Nevada desert to sample and enrich methanogenic microorganisms at extremely high temperatures.
South Bay Salt Works, San Diego, CA
SBSW20
October 2020 (1 day)
Nestor and Anne collected and incubated microbial communities living in hypersaline brines to determine the water activity limit of life, as part of their collaboration with NASA's Oceans Across Space and Time team.
Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California
IODP, Expedition 385
September - November 2019 (8 weeks)
R/V Joides Resolution
Nicolette teamed up with an international group of scientists to investigate single-cell rates of carbon and nitrogen uptake in high-temperature sediments.
Monterey Bay, CA
MMV19
April 2019 (6 days)
R/V Western Flyer; ROV Doc Ricketts
Amanda and Nicolette visited two hydrocarbon seeps in Monterey Bay to investigate methanotrophic and sulfate-reducing communities in an unusual geological setting.
Monterey Bay, CA
ESEL18 / FSEL18
June and August 2018 (4 days; 4 days)
R/V Western Flyer; ROV Doc Ricketts
Nicolette, Anne, & Amanda performed stable isotope incubations on sediment cores in situ to examine rates of nitrogen fixation in deep-sea sediments.
California continental shelf
OC17 (March Mudness)
March 2017 (11 days)
R/V Oceanus
Anne (chief scientist), Alma, Julian, Bennett, & Nicolette investigated the diversity, activity, and nitrogen cycling capabilities of microbes in deep-sea sediment and seawater.
Northern U.S. Atlantic Margin
AT36
July-August 2016 (2 weeks)
R/V Atlantis; HOV Alvin
Anne (co-chief scientist) participated in an early career training cruise focused on investigating the benthic macrofauna and microorganisms at several newly discovered hydrocarbon seeps on the Atlantic continental margin.