Sampling from the underway science seawater on the NES-LTER Summer Transect

R/V Endeavor is back at the dock, completing the NES-LTER Summer 2018 Transect cruise! Before stepping off the ship, high school science teacher Ashley Burnett provided this image mosaic from the Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB), showing phytoplankton and microzooplankton in the surface waters during the cruise. Ashley reports on this instrument as well as a flow cytometer and an Equilibrator Inlet Mass Spectrometer (EIMS) sampling from the underway science seawater: “Along our journey the sea water has been continually sampled while we are moving and on station. These measurements include an oxygen to argon gas ratio measurement, flow cytometry, and IFCB. The oxygen to argon ratio is used to measure primary productivity; oxygen varies with biological processes (photosynthesis and respiration) while the noble gas argon is unaffected. Flow cytometry is quantifying the amount of very small plankton. The IFCB takes pictures of larger phytoplankton, using a laser and camera triggered by the fluorescence of the phytoplankton chlorophyll. The NES-LTER Transect cruises in summer and winter will help us tell stories about the Northeast U.S. Shelf ecosystem and food web, how it changes over seasons and over time.”