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Day 33: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
The Great Belt science party.
The Revelle’s labs are empty of equipment and the ship is steaming up the coast of western Australia. Our expedition is drawing to a close after almost 5 weeks at sea, where we covered more than 6,000 miles and traversed 6 time zones — all to research a small plant that has a big impact on each of our lives. Over the course of the expedition, researchers collected and processed thousands of samples, yet the study of the Great Belt is far from being finished: more than a year’s worth of work awaits each scientist at his or her home laboratory. Thousands of samples need to be analyzed, and each of the individual pieces of the Great Belt study fit together before researchers can fully understand the biological, chemical, and physical components of this huge coccolithophore feature, and how it affects the ocean and our planet.
What is the Great Belt Research Cruise?
The Great Belt Research Cruise is an exploration of a phytoplankton feature in the Southern Ocean called the Great Southern Coccolithophore Belt. From February 18 to March 23, 2012, an international team of researchers will spend 5 weeks at sea between Africa and Australia investigating this feature, also known as the Great Belt. Stretching around the Southern Hemisphere, the Great Belt is home to an abundance of coccolithophores, a type of calcifying phytoplankton, during the austral spring and summer. The Great Belt covers almost a quarter of the ocean and can be seen on satellite images, but few field observations and experiments have been made within the Great Belt -- until now!