The ocean and its inhabitants play an important role in cycling carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Determining how much carbon is locked away in the ocean is critical to understanding Earth’s changing climate, but traditional observing approaches will never collect data at the scale or detail that we need to advance ocean carbon cycle science. 

MBARI researchers will use this expedition as an opportunity to test new methods that sustain detailed biological observations over long time periods and at high time resolution. By automating data collection, the team hopes for a major breakthrough in ocean observing.

MBARI engineers have developed a number of innovative imaging systems for autonomous operations that the expedition team will use to study ocean carbon cycling. The Planktivore microscope system can be deployed on MBARI’s long-range autonomous underwater vehicles to photograph plankton and marine snow particles in the ocean’s sunlit surface waters and the layers just below. Pairing the SnoCam+ camera with drifting sediment traps will help the team visualize particles sinking through the water column. Outfitting a CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) with a shadowgraph camera will allow the team to profile the water column and ground-truth visual observations with water samples.

Applying machine learning algorithms to the trove of visual data collected by these systems can rapidly scale observations of a critical, but understudied, part of the ocean carbon cycle.

SINKER is an imaging system designed by MBARI engineers for monitoring the rain of organic material from the waters above. Installed on the deep seafloor at MBARI’s cabled ocean observatory, this instrument is transforming our understanding of ocean carbon transport. SINKER has a continuous power and data connection, so it can remain deployed for months and transmit data to the team onshore in real time.

The Pacific Ocean is entering an El Niño period, when winds at the equator weaken, and warm water is pushed along the west coast of North and South America. This climate pattern has global implications and a significant impact on marine life. 

Warm water weakens coastal upwelling, creating cascading effects across the ocean food web from tiny plankton to commercial fisheries. The Carbon Flux Ecology Team is curious about how El Niño will impact carbon transport to the deep sea. During this expedition, they will recover SINKER and other moorings for maintenance, then deploy these platforms again to gather data during the winter when El Niño conditions will peak.

These instruments support MBARI’s goal of establishing a persistent presence in the ocean. Monitoring marine life and ecosystems from season to season reveals long-term trends in ocean health that will help us better predict how the ocean may change in the future.

With marine life and ecosystems facing a rising tide of threats from human activities, we urgently need to grow the community of scientists and engineers studying our changing ocean. MBARI is committed to fostering the next generation of ocean explorers. We strive to make ocean careers accessible to everyone. Tapping into a range of ideas allows us to look at challenges in new ways and pursue groundbreaking innovations.

MBARI’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program provides early-career researchers with an opportunity to conduct independent research with our staff. Lee Miller is a postdoc with the Carbon Flux Ecology Team supported by the Animals as Living Bioreactors project funded by Schmidt Sciences. Miller is exploring how the microbes in the guts of deep-sea animals transform and transport carbon, and will lead deployments of the surface-tether traps during the expedition.

The Carbon Flux Ecology Team is part of the Ocean Margins Initiative, an international project led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Ghana, and the University of Rhode Island, funded by Schmidt Sciences, that seeks to create science and community partnerships to understand oceanographic processes in the productive waters of the Gulf of Guinea.

This initiative provides students at the University of Ghana with hands-on training in marine science and technology. Earlier this summer, Scientist Colleen Durkin and Senior Research Specialist Crissy Huffard spent two weeks in Ghana mentoring marine science students. That work continues with the Chasing Marine Snowstorms expedition, with student collaborators Comfort Opoku and Stefania Emunah from the University of Ghana joining the expedition to work alongside Durkin and Huffard.