64PE368 - Dag 8

Today, the second of May 2013, the last CTD of the Charlet-4 cruise has been brought up from great depths to reveal its secrets to us. The CTD is a ring with bottles attached in a rosette shape which is lowered in the sea. When brought up again, bottles can be opened remotely at certain depths to retrieve water from that given depth. From these bottles, water is washed to remove viruses from the sample and keep their numerically dominant hosts, the bacteria, in the seawater sample. We do this because we want to monitor what the viral production rates (and derived from that the viral lysis rates of the bacterial hosts) are so we can determine how and to what extent viral infection affects these communities. This is done by taking a sample at 3 hour intervals during the first 12 hours, and once again after 24 hours.

This is my first cruise, which will take 10 days in total as we dock tomorrow, and I have learned many new techniques, including the experience of working in a 5°C portable laboratorium container.
The thing that surprised me most is we all work on phytoplankton, but the techniques and goals of everyone are quite diverse, but in a way, they all supplement each other.
And in essence I think that that is the best way to describe this cruise, diverse but great teamwork!