After a very successful month at sea, we have pulled into Samoa and are headed home. The labs are packed, samples and equipment stowed away. When we arrived, the Greenpeace ship, Esperanza, was in our dock space, so we had extra excitement as we were anchored in the harbor and ferried back and forth on the pilot boat. Thanks for following our blog- We've enjoyed sharing our time at sea with you!
One of the major challenges when sampling the deep waters is that all manipulations must be done with an arm which, even at maximum extension, has the grip force to pick up a 250lbs rock. This ability is very useful when one wants to pick up a 250lbs rock; however, sampling feather-light sulfur beehives becomes somewhat of an ordeal. Hard handling can result in a cloud of beehive dust. When Chief Scientist, Anna-Louise Reysenbach, jokingly challenged the Jason team to create a dainty tool able to successfully sample these tricky formations, she thought it couldn’t be done.
Jason engineer, Dara Scott (pictured above with the FST3000), took on the challenge. Ingenious Irish inventor that he is, Dara came up with a device that not only sampled beehives without touching them, but was also environmentally friendly. The FST 3000 recycled an ordinary tin can into a superb beehive sampler. It cuts the beehive off at its stem and gently cradles the delicate sample until it can be placed in the storage box to be taken to the surface safely. The powerful grip of the Jason arm is reduced, only being used to force the FST to cut the stem. 
The scientific community is agog, fueled by the buzz of successful test trials on the mysterious FST 3000. Above, the Jason control van looks on as the FST 3000 gets put into use.
As the galley wonders where all their soup cans keep disappearing to, marketing plans for the FST 3000 are in full swing:
“Do you want control over your chimney breaks?
Tired of throwing away tin cans?
Then get the FST 3000 with EaZe-Break S22
Now with rubberized ergonomically enhanced performance handles,
to really take control of those pesky vent situations.”
Things have started to wind down for a very busy cruise. In the past few days, we revisited Tui Malila and Mariner to retrieve the thermocouple arrays and fill in a few gaps in our samples. At each site we have had to retrieve transponders (devices that enable us to navigate accurately on the seafloor) and have had some difficulty locating these (will elaborate in a later blog!). Tonight, we’re headed to Tow Cam, the site for our final dive along the Eastern Lau Spreading Center. We’re excited to realize the cruise is almost over, but also sad. Sad – because we have made new friends who we’ll have to say good-bye to, but also sad because we don’t know when we’ll be returning to this very interesting deep-sea hydrothermal vent area.
The origin of the word mess, comes from Old French, mes, meaning portion of food. The mess onboard the Thompson doesn’t just serve a portion of food. It serves many. The steward (Sherry), 2nd cook (Sarah) and Mess Assistant (Michael) manage to feed the scientists and the crew high quality, nutrious food three times a day. And they still have time to make chocolate cake with maple-walnut frosting!
It’s much appreciated to be able to get off from sampling or doing a Jason watch and have several salads, soup, a main course (including very thoughtful vegetarian options), and dessert ready and waiting for you. There are even sandwiches, cereal and chocolate for those who sleep through a meal, or just want to snack.
So, the entire ship would like to thank Sherry, Sarah, and Michael for making their days that much easier.
Sherry and Sarah fight over a wishbone. Are they wishing they could make peanut butter cookies forever?
Michael and Sherry are all smiles mopping up the kitchen.
Sarah posing for the camera in front of her grill.
The array shown in the photo above was visited first and we were very happy to see a brand new "chimlet" growing out of the array cage. The white microbial biofilm can already be seen on the chimlet! We decided to keep this array down a little longer, so stay tuned for details on what we recover in the coming days. Nothing, however, could prepare us for what we were about to see as we approached the second array... 
If you remember one of our earlier blog posts, "A microbial home in 72 hours!", what formed on this array after 10 days can be more aptly described as a microbial apartment complex! It even has vacancies for fellow organisms like shrimp and crabs!! 
We were able to recover the majority of the chimney structure and can't wait to "see" what our analyses tell us about the microbial inhabitants and geochemical formation. A new array was placed in the same location that will be recovered after three days (see photo below). Who knows what type of structure we can expect to recover?!? 
If you want to know why we care, we’ll give you two reasons. First, if the formation of this micro-aggregate structure turns out to be common then it means the currently excepted conceptual model of “plume” formation (the two processes just described) is incomplete. It doesn’t explain the complete formation process and it doesn’t account for the different characteristics of a micro-aggregate versus a bare mineral particle. That’s important because a mineral particle covered in ‘goo’ doesn’t react with seawater the same way a bare mineral particle would; and, a micro-aggregate sinks much more slowly than an individual mineral particle – and can be transported much further away from a vent than they otherwise would. Second, particle formation in vent plumes is an extreme example of a more general process that happens in many other parts of the environment: rivers, estuaries, the surface ocean, and the middle ocean depths – a more general process that is a very important factor determining how chemicals move through the hydrosphere (scientific jargon for all the water on the planet). Plume particles are quite distinct from the particles that form in these other cases. But scientifically that makes them very useful because they may highlight parts of the particle formation process (microbial action for instance) that are less prominent in the other cases. Thus by studying these ‘plume’ particles we have the chance to learn something new and true for particle formation in all these other places.
*We are Chip Breier, Brandy Toner, Greg Dick, Karthik Anantharaman, Jason Sylvan, Sarine Fakra, Matthew Marcus, Katrina Edwards, Sheri White, and Chris German.
The bottom of the ocean here at the ELSC is a feast for the eyes. The smokers look like beehives and wasps nests; there are low, wide flanges and tall spires that look like California redwoods. And then there are the animals: snails, mussels, crabs, shrimp, sponges and a myriad of other fascinating creatures. But it's the diversity of what we can't see that brings many of us out here - we're here to study the microorganisms that live in the vent system. The Eastern Lau Spreading Center provides an ideal opportunity for microbiologists to explore whether the observed geological and geochemical differences along the Center influence the distribution of microorganisms. One way we have been investigating the diversity of the microbes from this area is by trying to grow them in the lab. This is like trying to figure out if somebody you have never met before is allergic to peanuts. How would you know if they didn’t tell you?! So, when trying to grow novel microorganisms in the lab, one has to be rather clever in trying to figure just what conditions they would like to grow under in the environment and then mimic that somehow in the lab. Conditions in the natural microbial world are much more favorable that in your sterile lab and in the glass tubes and incubators!
The very basics for growth are an energy source and a carbon source. That’s how we start our detective work. Then we decide what physical conditions might be conducive to grow (like acidity and temperature). With a combination of conditions and many tubes of media (see photo above), we use the sulfide chimney samples as the inoculums. In the photo below, you can see a sulfide chimney (in two pieces) with a white crust material. This crust material is actually teeming with microorganisms! We then incubate, and wait…
Once we have a microbe in culture in the lab, we can test it for all sorts of things. For example, we can test the extremes of temperature and acidity that it can withstand. We can also figure out how diverse it's diet is, and how it might be contributing to chemistry of the vent environment. All of these things help us to understand why different microorganisms live in different places in vent environments. And just like the animals that live in vent environments, there are many different kinds of microorganisms. On this cruise we've got a large team of microbiologists, all looking for different kinds of organisms. We each are targeting different energy and carbon sources, and different geochemical conditions using various kinds of media. We’ll try to summarize our efforts…
Of course much of the vent fluid here is quite acidic, around pH 3.5-4, so many of the organisms people are looking for are acidophiles ("acid lovers"), but even these come in various shapes and sizes. The Reysenbach group is looking for two different kinds of organisms. One group is the Aquificales, organisms that actually gain energy by combining oxygen and hydrogen to make water! Another group they're looking for are the DHVE (see previous blog post). Karyn is looking for organisms that use organic sulfur compounds to gain energy. Not much is known about these compounds in vent systems yet, but recent geochemical modeling suggests that they should exist in vent systems and that they could be a potential energy source for organisms in these environments. Tatyana, Alex and Anna are targeting other interesting metabolisms, including methane oxidation, oxidation of simple organic compounds with sulfur and sulfate, and manganese and iron reduction. In addition, Lise is even working on the microorganisms that feed on the colder rocks away from the venting structures. We’ve had some positive and encouraging results, but growing microbes is a slow business, so hopefully we'll have an update for you later!
One of our most successful culturing efforts has used the same approach, but with slightly different motivations.... Jon and Chris (from the Girguis group) have been using the same strategy for making yoghurt! Their initial inoculum: some yoghurt bought by the ship for breakfasts; the energy and carbon sources: milk; the physical conditions: 37 C (~100F) and a few hours….
And we have “Boaghurt”!! Boat Yoghurt. It is quite yummy!
One of the main focuses of this cruise has been to continue studying the ecology of thermoacidophilic (heat and acid loving) microorganisms at deep-sea hydrothermal vents. This unusual physiology was first discovered in these environments following our last trip to the Eastern Lau Spreading Center (ELSC) in 2005. Specifically, Aciduliprofundum boonei was isolated and characterized from a sulfide sample collected from the “bench top” area of the Mariner vent field. Photo 1 (above)- Electron photomicrograph of Aciduliprofundum boonei, from Reysenbach et al., 2006.
What made this discovery so exciting was that thermoacidophiles had been predicted to exist in these environments based on geochemical models of sulfide chimneys but had never been identified prior to the characterization of A. boonei. Additionally, A. boonei belonged to a lineage of the Archaea (the deep-sea hydrothermal vent Euryarchaeota 2, DHVE2) that has only been found in deep-sea hydrothermal systems suggesting that some microbial species may be endemic to these environments as has been observed with several vent animals. Photo 2 (below)- Phylogenetic relationship of the DHVE2 within the Euryarchaeota based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, from Reysenbach et al., 2006.
Since those initial discoveries, we have sequenced and analyzed the genome of A. boonei, revealing a strictly fermentative metabolism based on amino acids (proteins) as carbon and energy sources. We have also isolated several new species of the DHVE2 from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) and the East Pacific Rise (EPR). Molecular techniques such as quantitative polymerase-chain reaction (QPCR) and high throughput pyrosequencing have revealed interesting insights into the relative abundance of the DHVE2 and community composition of individual sulfide structures along the MAR. Photo 3 (below)- Example of a flange structure collected from the Lucky Strike vent field along the MAR in 2008 where the DHVE2 were found.
Our goal for this current expedition is to continue building upon our data set on the occurrence and distribution of thermoacidophiles and how the geology of specific vent types help to shape distribution patterns. In this regard, the ELSC provides a unique opportunity because the underlying host rock varies from north to south and is different from both the MAR and EPR.
Jason II
Motors used to drive Jason II:
6 people occupy the van when the vehicle is in the water: 3 members of the Jason team- a navigator, pilot and engineer; 3 members of the science party- a watch leader, data recorder and DVD recorder.
The weighted elevator is dropped over the side of the ship and travels to the bottom. Sample boxes and instruments are then carefully switched out by the Jason pilot. When the ship is ready to retrieve the elevator, an acoustic signal is sent to it that triggers the release of the attached weights. The elevator is then recovered by the crew and brought on deck using the ship's crane (see photo below).
Once the elevator is secured on deck, scientists are able to retrieve their samples. In the photo below, Chief Scientist, Anna-Louise Reysenbach is removing sulfide samples from the elevator and Lucia Upchurch, Kristen Myers and Tatyana Sokolova are waiting to take them into the lab for analysis.
In addition to collecting many samples of sulfide chimneys, two arrays have been successfully deployed here.
We also visited the Vai Lili vent site, where scientists sampled microbial mats rather than sulfide chimneys. Microbial mats are dense accumulations of microbes, so thick that they resemble a mat. In the photo below, we were measuring the temperature at the bottom of the yellow mat, which was 48˚C.
A cluster of spires called "Hogwarts,"
And a "Cappuccino" spire!
The ship departed ABE after a very successful ~30 hour Jason lowering and steamed north, back to Kilo Moana. Our primary objective was to recover the array that had been deployed to study microbial colonization of sulfides. The array was in position over an actively venting sulfide chimney and we were very excited to revisit the site and observe the newly precipitated mineral material. In the three photos below, you can see the array at 2620m and the array in the lab after being brought back on board.
