production of DMSP ? John is carrying out a set of extra incubation experiments try to answer these kind of questions .
John carefully placing his experimental bottle in the incubation container @ Jeremy Young
This isn ’ t quite the whole story , and there ’ s another piece of the jigsaw we hope to tackle . DMS and DMSP in seawater are a source of food for bacteria – potentially a very important source of food as they provide both carbon and sulphur , essential elements for bacterial growth . So we are performing a further set of side experiments to understand the effect ocean acidification may have on the rate at which bacteria devour DMSP and DMS .
All in all , this keeps John and I pretty busy !
It ’ s a bioassay sampling day today – day 3 of experiment 2 . So it was an early start followed by a long day of sampling , incubating and analysing for a lot of us . We ’ re still heading north , in the general direction of South Georgia , and we have hit rough seas again overnight . It ’ s a stark contrast to our days in the pack ice – angry seas , dark skies , a wild wind …. and not a penguin in sight .
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