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A Dunkable Laboratory

April 27, 2017

WHOI biologist Craig Taylor, left, and WHOI engineer Fred Thwaites work on the latest generation in a family of instruments called SIDs—Submersible Incubation Devices. Because it’s impossible to fully recreate ocean conditions in a laboratory, SID is a laboratory that scientists can put into the ocean. It draws seawater and microbes into incubation chambers and measures critical biochemical reactions performed by microbes in situ. Taylor first used SID to measure how phytoplankton near the sea surface convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon. He is now on a research cruise in the Pacific, using another model to investigate chemosynthetic microbes at seafloor hydrothermal vents. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)