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Into the Murk

November 24, 2013

Researchers Craig Taylor and Maria Pachiadaki bolt a turbidity meter to a chain hanging from a Microbial Sampler-Submersible Incubation Device (MS-SID). They used the MS-SID to collect water and microbes from a deep hypersaline anoxic basin, or DHAB, more than beneath the surface of the Mediterranean Sea. DHAB water contains so much salt and particulate matter that it is murkier than normal seawater. The turbidity sensor detected when MS-SID was in the spot researchers wanted to sample by sending out a beam of light and measuring how much the light was scattered by particles in the water.(Photo by Cherie Winner, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)