Phytoplankton Ecology in the Monterey Bay
In a project supported by NOAA’s ECOHAB program, which aims to understand the ecology of harmful algal blooms in the ocean, Lōkahi sailed the bay to probe the populations of microscopic algae – phytoplankton. The goal of this sailing search was to find areas of Monterey Bay where a certain genus of phytoplankton was blooming. This wind-powered reconnaissance, in turn, informed where a large collaborative team from MBARI, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Stanford University directed the capabilities of the R/V Rachel Carson.
The research team will be exploring microbial ecology by integrating observations of the marine environment and its changes with a deep dive into the nature of the phytoplankton community and its activity – using genomics to identify species, transcriptomics to examine their gene expression, and metabolomics to characterize cellular metabolites. Toxins produced by some harmful algal blooms can be transferred throughout aquatic food webs.
Our Collaborators
Dr. John Ryan
Senior Research Specialist at MBARI
John is a biological oceanographer studying the ecology of plankton, fish, and mammals—primarily through integration of remote and in situ sensing technologies. Through science–engineering collaborations this research involves advancing methods of sampling and data analysis.