In one hour, the 11th of August 2012 at 15.30 hrs, my bonusdaughter Kristina gets married to her Richard in the church of Kungsholmen in Stockholm. Afterwards there will be a large party at Piperska Muren. When I talked to my husband Jorma late yesterday evening through the iridium telephone I felt very strongly that I would prefer to be there and so I cried a little. So what am I doing here?
For a long time it was highly uncertain if this Arctic expedition would take place and if so if we were selected to come along. However, on the 17th of February we got to know that we could join the expedition. It was impossible to say no, such a chance is seldom available. It has been a procedure over many years, an application to the Swedish Research Council for participation in the cruise, apply for grants for research materials and buy over 100 different small and larger things like filters, tubing, flaks, test tubes, chemicals, isotopes and two refrigerators with glass doors. On top of that special equipment was sent from the USA, Chile and Germany. Everything should be in Helsingborg in time before Oden would leave Sweden.
The most exciting event was that two small gas tubes with isotope-marked nitrogen gas (on which all our experiments depend) arrived in Helsingborg in the last minute despite that they were ordered already in the beginning of May. Another exciting thing was that Laura’s suitcase with clothes and complementing research materials was stuck at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. In the end the suitcase arrived to Svalbard 15 minutes before Oden would leave for the sea ice. Our kind captain Erik Andersson sent a small boat to the shore to get the suitcase and our happiness was total. Everything and everybody had arrived on board and our research adventure could start!
Laura’s suitcase arrives at Oden.
Microbial communities and their function in the Arctic marine ecosystem are largely unknown. In our research project we study these communities in and immediately under the sea ice. Through DNA and RNA analyses, mass-sequencing and bioinformatics we explore which thousands of species occur, which genes they use for different biological processes at the time of sampling and how much carbon and nitrogen they take up in different ways. The project participants are molecular biologists Beatriz Díez and Anna Edlund, oceanographers Laura Farias and Rachel Foster and ecologists Peter Sylvander and I. Bea, Laura, Peter and I are on board of Oden right now to perform the field work.
Bea, Pauline, Laura and Peter.
Sea ice covers about 5 % of the sea surface, but with the ongoing global warming this is decreasing. With our research we hope to contribute with new knowledge about the role of sea ice in global biogeochemical cycles and what it would mean if the ice cover would disappear. Microbial communities are of large functional importance. For example, in samples from my previous Arctic expeditions with Oden 2002 and 2005 Bea and I found genes from marine nitrogen-fixing heterotrophic bacteria and cyanobacteria. According to science they should not be there. It is known that these organisms are important for fixing nitrogen on land and in freshwater in the polar areas, but nothing is known about them in ice-covered seas. Nitrogen-fixing organisms can use nitrogen gas from the air, something no other organisms are capable of. The air consists for 78 % of nitrogen, one of life’s most important building stones occurring in DNA, amino acids, proteins and many other bio molecules. What makes nitrogen-fixing organisms so important is that they provide ”new” nitrogen from the air to the earth’s ecosystems. We know that nitrogen fixers are important in the global nitrogen cycle, but how important the process is in ice-covered polar seas is unknown. This is one of the questions we work with right now.
Our results will emerge when our expedition samples are analysed this autumn. The practical work we carry out on board starts with Peter going out with the helicopter to the ice together with Lars and Brian from Denmark. Lars makes a hole in the ice and takes out the ice core which he and Brian then use for photo biological studies. Peter uses the hole to pump up 280 L water from the pores in the ice (from 1 m deep holes) or from the seawater under the ice (a hole straight through the ice, about 2 m deep). The last sample he takes is for the RNA analyses for which the sample must be as fresh as possible. The water is left on the ice because it is too heavy for the helicopter with passengers and the pilot later returns alone to get it. The first time I was a little afraid that he would not find it back, the ice is moving, so GPS orientation alone is not enough. Our pilots Sven and Arild are very skilled, they always find our water!
Peter on the ice.
When the helicopter comes in, Bea, Laura and I are ready to start working with the water. Peter helps with filling the experimental bottles, but then he needs to eat and rest for a while after the tough hours of field work. Bea filters for RNA and DNA and later on for metagenomics with special equipment we have borrowed from the Craig Venter Institute in San Diego. With this equipment she filters 140 L of water on three filters with different pore sizes to collect organisms of different sizes: nanoplankton, picoplankton and bacteria. Laura starts up the experiments for carbon and nitrogen fixation and uptake in refrigerators with glass doors and illumination outside. For this we use isotope-marked nitrogen and carbon in different forms, which will later be analyzed with gas chromatography and the nanoSIMS technique to see which cells have taken up the isotopes. I filter water samples for pigment and nutrient analyses, etc. and measure photosynthetic capacity in the water.
In the beginning we had some practical problems, but we got excellent help from Joakim, Erik and Björn from the Polar Secretariat with setting up our equipment and data connections. One quite stupid thing we did as well. We have an American peristaltic pump with us which uses 110 Volt. By accident we plugged it into 220 Volt. All lights in our lab container went down and the pump was broken. Thanks to Odens best electrician Jörn everything works again. Things move on, we did six experiments and three CTD stations, and we are happy with that progress. Off course we hope to reach the North Pole where we can wave with many flags, Swedish (Pauline, Peter), Chilean (Bea, Laura), as well as our countries of birth The Netherlands (Pauline), Spain (Bea), Argentina (Laura), But most of all, we hope to get good scientific results!
We have a lot do on the ice and in the lab during the day and often also in the evenings. The rest of the time we eat or sleep. We get extremely spoilt to get food served at regular times and that Lasse, Peter and Anki make such good food. Breakfast, lunch and dinner times are important for keeping some type of daily rhythm. It is light all the time and it is easy to forget what time of day it is. A good thing is also pea soup, pan cakes and punch, so that we know it is Thursday.
Now it is 18.30 and we had our Saturday dinner, beefsteak with fried potatoes. I have phoned home and heard that the bride and groom have said yes to each other. I am so happy for them. Now they travel to the Bahamas and I continue still further north.
Pauline Snoeijs Leijonmalm
Professor in Marine Ecology, Stockholm University
Illustration: GEUS