Deep sea’s newest collab! MultiPuffer x WBAT

Hi everyone!

I’m Nina, a graduate student in the Crustomics lab at Florida International University. This is my first time sailing with the Deep-Sea Benefits (DSB) project and the DEEPEND crew and it has been an absolute blast so far!

While most folks on board are here to identify and collect samples captured by the MOCNESS, my role on board strays from the usual bread and butter of DSB and DEEPEND by characterizing the pelagic community… without collecting or seeing a single specimen at all. It sounds like absolute madness, right? How is that even possible?

Well, I am using an approach called Environmental DNA (eDNA) to target and collect genetic material shed by animals in the environment and I’ve paired up with Ian Areford from Dr. Kevin Boswell’s lab to combine this method with acoustic technology. By collecting water samples from each of our stations I hope to capture information about the pelagic community based on the eDNA from my filter samples. Of course, we hope to find DNA from the same species of the animals we are seeing collected by the MOCNESS. But what’s exciting is that eDNA might capture genetic signatures of other organisms that evaded the nets or weren’t collected due to other factors such as behavior, size, or sampling limitations. We are also chasing the daily phenomenon of diel vertial migration to determine whether these migrations could be captured with eDNA.

Fig. 1-  eDNA MultiPuffer

This is all especially exciting because we are debuting our new eDNA MultiPuffer in the Gulf during this cruise, which allows us to sample incredible volumes of water (>1000 L) in a single cast! We’ve mounted the MP and Wideband Autonomous Transceiver (WBAT) on the CTD rosette to create perhaps the most untraditional, Frankenstein-esque rosette you’ve ever seen¾affectionally named LOLA.

Fig. 2- Nina Ramos and Ian Areford with LOLA

Aside from all the amazing research happening out at sea, I’m also especially grateful for the moments in between where I get to connect with others on board and slow down to enjoy and awe at all the Gulf has to offer. 

Fig. 3- Science team watching a pod of dolphins on the bow.