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A Device Named SID

January 17, 2015

In November 2014, researchers used Alvin to position and test a deep-sea instrument called Vent-SID for the first time at a hydrothermal vent site on the East Pacific Rise. It was the latest in a series of SIDs (Submersible Incubation Devices) developed by WHOI microbiologist Craig Taylor and WHOI engineers Fred Thwaites, Ed Hobart, Stephen Faluotico, and Michael Boesel. SIDs collect water samples containing marine microbes and incubate them to measure the biochemical reactions that the microbes perform. Vent-SID has the unique capacity to keep its samples at elevated temperatures in the near-freezing conditions of the seafloor.(Photo courtesy of Chief Scientist Stefan Sievert, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)