We have a new member to our scientific team now, who arrived by helicopter a few days ago. Ian Hawes is an aquatic ecologist from New Zealand that this team has collaborated with many times before. He has extensively studied the underwater communities of the lakes here in the Dry Valleys, but he also has done many projects under the sea ice near McMurdo as well diving research in other part of the world, like the islands of the South Pacific.
Now that Ian is here, we have two divers – the minimum required for safety reasons (Tyler is our other diver). They take turns diving into the lake, in dry suits. Each dive is done with a specific purpose in mind. They've taken water samples from different depths and they've filmed some dives using the GoPro cameras so they can model the microbial communities using technology at U.C. Davis. They will also take samples of the mats.
The mat samples end up in a couple of different forms, depending on what they are going to be used for. In Tyler's case, he's interested in their shapes and composition. Many of his samples will be taken with core tubes that look sort of like a clear plastic in the shape of a paper towel tube. If he gently drives that straight down into the mat, he can preserve a lot of the structure of the mat for analysis later.
Megan, our microbiologist, studies the mats with an eye towards understanding the range of species present. She takes apart the samples by putting a fingernail-sized amount in each of many small test tubes. She then adds a chemical that breaks down the cell membranes present and preserves the DNA for analysis later. The DNA will tell her what kinds of microbes are present in this community.
