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The Big (Winter) Chill

September 15, 2014

MIT-WHOI Joint Program students Alexis Fischer and Isabela Le Bras braved the January cold to conduct sediment cores in search of the plankton Alexandrium fundyense at Nauset Marsh in Orleans, Mass. This plankton species forms a harmful algal bloom (sometimes called a “red tide“) each spring in the marsh. Fischer is studying how seasonal variability—warmer winters, colder springs, for instance—influence when spring blooms form. At the end of a bloom, the plankton cells transition into cysts (similar to seeds) and fall to the marsh bottom. Fischer thinks the cysts might need to undergo a cold pre-treatment before germinating in the spring, much like daffodil bulbs.(Photo courtesy of Alexis Fischer, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)