Читать книгу Practical Field Ecology - C. Philip Wheater - Страница 43

Marine microbes are an extremely interesting group of organisms; what they are and what they are doing can offer valuable insight into the health of marine ecosystems such as coral reefs. Here, Gareth and his team were interested in sampling marine microbes living in the water column above coral reefs within the Chagos Archipelago, a remote group of oceanic atolls and islands spanning over 200 km of latitude in the remote Indian Ocean. In fact, the coral reefs of the Chagos Archipelago are arguably some of the most remote coral reefs on Earth and form one of the world's largest Marine Protected Areas.

After travelling from the UK to Bahrain and on to a military base on the island of Diego Garcia located within the Chagos Archipelago, the team boarded the British Indian Ocean Territory's enforcement vessel, the Grampian Frontier.

This was to be their home and science platform for the next 4 weeks and they set sail to survey 29 reefs across the Archipelago, including collecting near‐reef water microbial samples. The first challenge arose when attempting to carry out sample processing on a ship designed with cold climates and oily rescues in mind, rather than tropical temperatures and sterile laboratory conditions. This presented a significant problem: how to construct a temporary microbiology laboratory where they could process, freeze, and store samples on such a vessel. The second challenge was to then determine how to transport frozen seawater samples (that contained the microbes) back from Chagos, through Bahrain and then on to the UK, without the samples melting in temperatures regularly exceeding 40 °C.