Life Beyond the Beaker

Friend and colleague, Sam Jones explains in this blog why we were on the research cruise and how it fits into the ONSAP research program. This blog has also been published on the SAMS news page and the OSNAP/Class blog, it is really good!!    "We often think of the world’s oceans as discrete systems, operating independently from one another. In fact, they are so deeply interconnected it is more appropriate to think of a single World Ocean, in constant circulation.  Like a vast, stately conveyor belt, water flows from the tropics to polar regions where it cools and becomes denser, pouring back along the basins and valleys of the seabed towards the lower latitudes. This flow encompasses every ocean basin and takes many hundreds of years to complete a full circuit. A striking example of this process in action is the ocean’s delayed response to climate change: since the industrial revolution, the Polar seas have been taking in additional heat and pollutants from human activit...