Ross Sea Connection

The microscope room on the Palmer is just big enough for a slide preparation table and two bulky microscopes. It’s dark inside, and the microscope tabletops are designed to rock back and forth on an air cushion to counteract the ship’s rolling. As they do this, they make a deep sighing that sounds like Darth […]

It was the color of the ocean from space that brought us here. We knew it was a gamble, a dogleg away from our main sampling plan. But satellites were telling us that phytoplankton were flourishing here, over deep water, where no one could explain it and no one had ever been to study it […]