Deployment: AT15-25

Our primary research objective, centers on understanding the diversity and distribution of protists associated with hydrothermal vent systems. As primary grazers of the bacteria in marine systems we hope to discover if they play a major role in structuring vent microbial communities. This will entail deploying and recovering many small protist collectors (proto-traps) in and around the vent system both in Guaymas and at 9N. We will also be collecting small water samples associated with each of the units for geochemical analysis. In addition we will be collecting large volumes of water for protist, bacteria and viral studies with our free vehicle system (LVWS) and with the ships CTD. We will also be making discrete collections of Guaymas sediments, bivalves and Alvinellid worms.

Cruise information and original data are available from the NSF R2R data catalog.