Meyer-Kaiser lab

The past few days, we have sampled at the northern HAUSGARTEN stations. Honestly, it feels a bit weird to say "the northern stations" because, well, we're in the Arctic. Every station is a northern station in a way. But further north we went, to nearly 80 N.  Johanna deploying our larval net while I  manage the line.  The ice at the northern stations is different from East Greenland. It's thinner, more delicate, ridden with holes and so, so blue. From the ship, you can watch the ice floes crack and break under the strain of the hull. They act like soft cotton compared to Polarstern 's sturdy steel. As we drive between stations, the ice floes make the ship's motion bumpy, like so many pot holes on an uneven country road. If East Greenland ice is a deep January freeze, the northern HAUSGARTEN stations are a slushy day in late March.  The ice edge is one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, at least for a short time. Each spring, as the ice begins to melt,...

Admittedly, one of the reasons I study marine invertebrate larvae is because I find them beautiful. I just have to share some of the amazing specimens we collected at HG-I. All photos were taken using a compound microscope at 50 - 100x magnification by myself and Johanna Weston. We called this snail "black spot," but I think he's cuter than the ominous name suggests. Not actually sure who this is, but it's clearly an embryo in the act of dividing into multiple cells! A pluteus larva of the brittle star Ophiopholis aculeata I kept calling these baby clams "tiny, stupid bivalves" because they're challenging to identify and it was 2 am. Turns out, Johanna made that the official morphotype name in our data sheet! A cyprid larva of the barnacle Balanus balanus . Not sure what species this is, but we called it "embryo shiny."

We arrived at station HG-I, in the eastern Fram Strait, at 9 pm. Our icy surroundings had been replaced by open water as we steamed eastward, and the air was a balmy 5 C. I barely needed my second jacket to step outside.  A sample at 9 pm isn't too bad. Research operations on Polarstern take place 24 hours a day, so sometimes the schedule has me sampling in the middle of the night. Everybody takes their turn at the night shift - that's just how it is. We'll sort this sample, I thought, then get some sleep and rise for our next sample in the morning.  Yeah, not so much.  The HG-I sample was our most diverse one yet. There were so many larvae in our net - and not all the same species. We had three different brittle stars, two different worms, three types of snails, a barnacle, a little trochophore, and I don't even know how many clams. Insanity! A map showing the two main currents in the Fram Strait and the location of HG-I (yellow star). Plus, the ship was running ahea...

A polar bear seen off Polarstern 's stern It was just before 7 am when I stepped through the water-tight door and out onto Polarstern ’s working deck. Crew members in life vests and hard hats were standing around, waiting patiently as the winch reeled in the latest sampling gear at 1 m/s. The air was cold and dry and still. I leaned over the rail to gaze at the sea. Gleaming white ice floes reflected the sunlight, bright as mid-day even though it was only early morning. Pale blue melt ponds dotted the seascape. Plate-sized animal tracks were visible in the snow on one ice floe – probably from a polar bear. We saw one off the ship’s stern just yesterday. Everything is still in the ice. Waves are dampened by the thick, frozen sheets. If there is swell, the long, slow waves just lift the ice floes up and lower them back down. It looks like the ocean is breathing. Soon enough, I was joined by my postdoc, Johanna, another ecologist named Alex, and one of the deck hands. Alex low...

A segmented worm larva in our HG-IV sample,  probably Prinospio cirrifera The central station of the HAUSGARTEN observatory , HG-IV, is a very special place. I'm willing to bet it's one of the most researched points in the Arctic Ocean. Since 1999, this unassuming seafloor habitat has been the subject of long-term experiments and repeat annual sampling . Water temperature and current speed are recorded year-round by instruments on a long-term lander. We return to HG-IV over and over on every HAUSGARTEN expedition. I could rattle off a list of the common species on the seafloor at HG-IV, and I'm sure many of my colleagues could as well. It is a place that we all know very well.  We've spent quite a bit of time at HG-IV this week. Between water sampling, sediment sampling, plankton nets, and landers, there is hardly a component of the ecosystem that we have not touched.  The larval samples we collected at HG-IV were our best ones yet! There was much higher biodiversity, ...

Her name is Berta.  She spends most days lying on Polarstern 's stern. Sometimes, she goes for a long, deep swim. She is made of metal and mesh. Her insides hold untold mysteries of the Arctic deep sea.  I was pretty pleased with my completed net. That's right, Berta is a piece of sampling gear - an epibenthic sledge, to be exact. There's a team on board Polarstern right now that uses their affectionately-named sledge to collect samples from right above the seafloor. The more I talked to the team leader, Saskia, the more we realized that Berta could be a valuable tool for collecting larvae, too.  In my seemingly endless search for Arctic deep-sea larvae, the hardest habitat to reach is the water right above the seafloor. Yet, that's where I suspect many of the larvae might be. I've tried all sorts of different ways to collect and filter water from the very bottom of the ocean - I have deployed a  high-volume plankton pump  on a lander and even left long-term la...

How do larvae disperse in the Arctic Ocean? It's a big question. Over the past several years, I have been on a quest to find the larvae of seafloor invertebrates in the high Arctic. It started with an experiment in 2017. As some of you might remember, I was invited to complete a long-term experiment that year. A lander that had been deployed in 1999 was brought to the surface , and I analyzed the colonists on the lander to understand how communities form in the Arctic deep sea. I found surprisingly little. After 2 decades, only about a quarter of the local species had recruited to the lander, and most individuals were too small to see with the naked eye. I concluded that Arctic deep-sea communities take much longer than 2 decades to develop .  There are several possible explanations for the slow rate of colonization in the Arctic deep sea. Maybe the adults aren't producing any young. That would be pretty interesting, honestly, because it would mean the Arctic deep-sea basin is ...

"Stand outside at about 11:00 tomorrow. You should see a dotted red line in the water."  - one of the PhD students on board, obviously being ridiculous  When you cross the Arctic Circle, nothing much happens. The lines we're so used to seeing on maps are not present in the real world. There's no sudden change in wind direction, no drop in air or water temperature. A wave does not swell up and high-five you for arriving in the Arctic (although that would be pretty sweet). You just...keep moving forward.  The larval lab is ready to go! As uneventful as today's line-crossing may have been, the science party on board R/V Polarstern is getting excited. Last night's sunset was our last one for a month. The wind chill outside requires the donning of multiple layers now. Every sign points to the fact that our week-long transit from Germany to the Fram Strait is nearly over.  At this point, we are all more than ready for our first samples. The equipment has been fully...

On Petra's balcony overlooking the Weser River She picked me up at the train station. When I stepped out of the car, I spotted her immediately in her pastel purple jacket. The matching hat and sunglasses she wore helped protect her 82-year-old skin from the sun. She hugged me tight and told me how happy she was to see me. I returned the sentiment - because I truly was happy to see her too.  Petra Kollakowsky is my adopted grandmother. We met through church back in 2011, when I lived in Germany, and we have traded handwritten letters ever since. I stop by and visit her every time I'm  in Bremerhaven. I call her "Oma," German for "grandmother," and she calls me "Enkel," German for "grandchild." Even though Petra never married or had children of her own, she is incredibly maternal in her interactions with others. Our relationship is truly familial.  As it turns out, I'm not the only one who feels this way about Petra. For the last sever...

Elisabeth and the queen "Hi Kirstin, we're mega-excited to see you and will be standing outside in the arrivals hall. Keep an eye out for a rainbow-colored child-size umbrella and a woman who looks like she could be 8 months pregnant." - the last text Stefanie sent me before we met at Berlin's airport It is a powerful experience to watch a friend become a mother, especially one you have known a long time . I met Stefanie back when we were just students in 2011, and now she is a month away from welcoming child #2. Gone are the long nights of lab work followed by 4 am wake-up calls to watch a beloved show live online. Gone are the months-long expeditions to the ends of the earth. Now, life revolves around mid-day naps, a toddler who is always begging for sparkling apple juice, and the anticipation of a new baby's arrival.  I made a joke to Steffi about her daughter, Elisabeth, sharing a name with two queens of England. "Oh, yes," Steffi responded, "El...