Monday, March 29, 2004
Few will write about the sunrises on the RV Atlantis. Most are asleep, after a busy night of sample processing. But early mornings are my favorite. This morning, it was still dark when I got up. The sky was alive with stars, and in the distance clouds occasionally illuminated in lightning. Then, as dawn awoke, the boobies glided lazily by, but no chirping of red cardinals and chickadees. Instead a light display of clouds and color. A small orange glow from the rising sun on the water slowly meandered its way across the water from the horizon, opening up like the aperture of a camera, becoming less focused and more diffuse, spanning an ever greater muted glow on the waves and then reached me and the spot I was standing on the ship. Good morning to another day and another dive for Alvin.

As I think about what to write, I think about the things that make me excited about doing science, and why I feel so fortunate to be able to do this type of work. It's not work for me, but more like a game of intrigue, detective work. I look under the microscope at some stringy slime from a crabs leg. A complex intertwined mass of microbes of different sizes and shapes. Some clinging to their big brothers, others making grains of
sulfur (yellow spots in the pictures), all interacting, feeding on each other, transforming geochemistry into energy and mineral. These little organisms are more diverse and are capable of a greater diversity of
metabolisms than any other lifeforms. I am reminded of what Carl Woese once said.. paraphrased.. if all the microbes from Earth went extinct, we wouldn't survive very long; but if we removed all the animals.. the
microbes would continue to thrive on this planet. Trying to figure out what these microbes do, who they are, and how they transform their environment at deep-sea hydrothermal vents is part of the scientific detective work to understanding the broader impacts microbes have on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in our solar system.
—Anna Louise