marine biology, oceanography, science communication, research, phd, fieldwork, university of oxford, climate science, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 01 February 11 2025 Come along with us on our trip from Rio to Namibia via the mid-Atlantic ridge looking at the role microscopic photosynthesisers play in absorbing carbon from our atmosphere and storing it away in the ocean depths Hello! If you're new here, I'm Ari, a PhD student at the University of Oxford, an avid science communicator and video reporter/producer for new scientist . I'm about to embark on my second research cruise, for the expedition that will provide me with the bulk of field-data for my DPhil (that's the Oxford term for PhD). Before joining the ship, I spent an incredible week in the Amazon Rainforest - I couldn’t miss the opportunity whilst in Brazil! But I'm now on my way to join the ship and my team in Rio de Janeiro, from where we will sail to Walvis Bay, Nambia, over 47 days at sea. The cruise, aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook, is sailing under project CarTRidge . The overarching project is looking into the role the mid-Atlantic ridge plays in carbon export. I'm part of Team Plankton, looking at the role these microscopic photosynthesisers play in absorbing carbon from our atmosphere and storing it away in the ocean depths. We are a team of four: Professor Alex Poulton (Herriot-Watt University), Dr Ben Fisher (Herriot-Watt University) and Frieda Schlegel (The Marine Biological Association/Southampton University) ... and me! back to diaries home page I'm going to be sharing about my own experience of being a PhD student at sea - the ups and downs, night shifts and hours at the filtering rig. If you're interested in more information about the cruise at large, our chief scientist Professor Jonathan Sharples is keeping a blog I'd highly recommend a read. previous entry next entry

marine biology, oceanography, climate science, science communication, research, phd, fieldwork, university of oxford, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 03 February 19 2025 Containers, rigs and a fond farewell to Rio Our containers arrived which means not only do we have equipment but, in our case, we now have a lab. One of my most asked questions is whether the labs are built in to the ship and the answer is yes, many are, but some are also built into shipping containers which can be mixed and matched according to the needs of the specific expedition. That called for a 0500 start today, which was easy due to the excitement we all felt at finally getting going, and all hands on deck (now I understand where that phrase comes from!) to get everything unpacked, set up and tied down to enable us to sail the next morning. The first order of business was building filtering rigs - we have 8 in total with capacity to process 45 samples at a time, which might seem excessive but is absolutely necessary to do everything we want to do. Most of our rigs are towers connected to a vacuum pump, which uses negative pressure to draw the samples through the filters, but I also brought a peristaltic pump to filter my cartridge filters in-line, which required some clever DIY rigging to stay stable and easy to use. back to diaries home page We finished early and headed out for one final night in Rio - which was bittersweet as we'd come to miss it but we're absolutely ready to get going previous entry next entry

marine biology, oceanography, climate science, science communication, science journalism, research, phd, fieldwork, university of oxford, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 11 February 28 2025 'Drifting over the Lake District in an airship at a height of 3000 metres and trying to drop a rock onto a barn roof. At night' ~ Chief Scientist Jonathan Sharples Having transited overnight to our ridge site, we arrived around 0400 and immediately set about getting the CTD in the water. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get it out before dawn but it was a good day to have a bit of a play with methods - I was able to try out my new filtering rig, with the consensus being that you cannot filter 5L of seawater through a 0.2um filter under vacuum (at least, not in less than 5 hours!). So, lesson learned (the long way). Filtering in hand, it was time to measure some chlorophylls - we were measuring total and size-fractionated chlorophyll, to enable us to understand the structure of the phytoplankton community in the water. We measure this with a spectrophotometer, once the filters have been in acetone for around a day after sampling. This measures the absorbance of light through the sample, from which we can understand how much of the chlorophyll pigment was present in the original filter. Today we also dropped our second mooring – this time on the ridge. This works much the same as the first (see 25th Feb entry) except now we’re trying to drop the anchor on a specific location on this underwater mountain range. To quote our chief scientist, Jonathan, ‘it’s a bit like drifting over the Lake District in an airship at a height of 3000 metres trying to drop a rock onto a barn roof. At night.’ These two sets of moorings, together, will enable us to observe differences between the two sites – on and off the ridge. In the evening (or, our version of evening, which is essentially 4-5pm) we were lucky enough to witness a part of the planetary parade - seeing Venus, Jupiter and Mars while the wirewalkers were deployed over the side. back to diaries home page previous entry next entry

marine biology, oceanography, climate science, science communication, science journalism, reseach, phd, fieldwork, university of ocford, carbon cycle, plankton Entry 13 March 02/03 2025 Another day another CTD. -80 degrees, lunch time naps and a fishing trip. Today was definitely the craziest day we've had so far - and on a Sunday too. Alarms went off at 02:45am, which is feeling pretty normal by now, and we headed down to the main lab to watch the CTD profile as it went down. Whilst my filters were filling (15L per line takes me about 1.5hours), we filtered samples for SEM, which will allow us to visualise, count and identify our plankton to get an idea of their diversity and community changes over physical gradients. Having snap frozen my samples, stored them down in the -80, and acid-rinsed my carboys, I finished up my first shift around 10:00am. Then it was time to convince my body to sleep again (in fairness, it had been working for 7 hours), to store up a few hours in anticipation of the next night shift. I resurfaced just before dinner (or is it breakfast? I've lost track) and checked in with the day shift crew as their evening CTD went down. Once it was back on deck it was time for the affectionately named ‘fishing trip’. This is the deployment of the Tow-Fish, the sampling device that will supply us with trace-metal clean surface seawater straight to our RN container, so we can do our 120-hour nutrient addition experiments. We took the Fish out of her box and re-applied the electrical tape we had so diligently removed (oops!), and before long it was time to get her up into the air and over the side. With the help of Tina, Paul P and Richie (NMF Techs and the real stars of the research cruise show), as well as crew members Burt and Andy, we managed to get the Fish in the water whilst the captain ramped the ship up to 5 knots to flush through the system. This was the most exciting moment of the cruise so far for me, and I'm so pleased to say the whole thing went off without a hitch in the end. We have an ongoing joke that this is our experiment when it’s going well, and my experiment when it’s not (or when it's keeping us up at unsociable hours), but all joking aside, this is really my baby and I am super excited to have it underway. We'll hopefully have three 5-day experiments over the next few weeks, which should give us temporal and spatial resolution of nutrient limitation and co-limitation across the South Atlantic Once the Fish had flushed through for a few hours, it was time to get down to the business of filling bottles, taking T0 samples and spiking with nutrients, which took us 'til around 0200. Dropping the bottles into the on-deck incubator was an extremely satisfying moment. Add another few hours of filtering, fixing and freezing and it was a 0400 bedtime for us, making this a 25-hour shift in total (with a little lunchtime nap). I'll see you tomorrow, not too early though. back to diaries home page previous entry next entry

@ScienceForMyMum In this section you can see copies of my social media posts from @scienceformymum on Instagram . Please follow along if you have the app in support of my work. Originally started as a science communication outreach project for my Masters Degree, this has quickly proved popular with a following over 50,000 followers. The root of the name 'scienceformymum' comes from video blogs I used to send to my mum (who is not a scientist) to give her a glimpse of my days in the lab, and these clips that I recorded 'for my mum' evolved into the posts and reels you can see now. Once I began to post publicly it seemed to reinforce my belief that our science should be communicated in a way that anyone can understand ... even my mum!

BIO-Carbon Expedition 2024 (JC269) Project Name This is your Project description. Provide a brief summary to help visitors understand the context and background of your work. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to start. Project Name This is your Project description. A brief summary can help visitors understand the context of your work. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to start. Project Name This is your Project description. Provide a brief summary to help visitors understand the context and background of your work. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to start. Project Name This is your Project description. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to start. Project Name This is your Project description. Provide a brief summary to help visitors understand the context and background of your work. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to start. Project Name This is your Project description. A brief summary can help visitors understand the context of your work. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to start.