Deep Wa­ter In­cub­ator

A so-called 'Deep Wa­ter In­cub­at­or' was de­veloped to­gether with our long-term col­lab­or­ator Mike Zub­kov (NOC Southamp­ton). The ra­tional be­hind such an in­cub­ator is the in situ in­cub­a­tion of iso­tope-labeled sub­strates in the meso- and bathy­pela­gic ocean in­stead of con­duct­ing in­cub­a­tions on deck. The ap­proach could help to min­im­ize de­com­pres­sion ar­ti­facts dur­ing in­cub­a­tion and thereby lead­ing to over­es­tim­ated turn-over rates of car­bon and ni­tro­gen com­pounds.

The In­cub­ator is based on a rig with 6 pairs of in­ter­con­nec­ted mod­i­fied Niskin-bottles, a mix­ing sys­tem based on sa­lin­ity pumps, a CTD unit from Seabird and a deck-con­trolled mech­an­ical at­tach­ment of tubes con­tain­ing tracer- or fix­at­ive solu­tion. The lat­ter al­lows the pre­cise reg­u­la­tion of in­cub­a­tion times at in situ con­di­tions.

A first pro­to­type of the in­cub­ator was de­ployed in Oc­to­ber and Novem­ber 2016 in the oli­go­trophic North­ern At­lantic Gyre. Al­though first res­ults are prom­ising fur­ther im­prove­ments and modi­fic­a­tions are ne­ces­sary for the next de­ploy­ment.

Deep Water Incubator
Deep Water Incubator ready for deployement. © G. Giljan, MPI MM
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