Carbon Retention in a Colored Ocean (CARIACO)

R. Varela & M. Hayes processing water samples aboard B/O Hermano Gines

Principal Investigators: Mary Scranton and Gordon Taylor

Funded by NSF & Fondo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion (FONACIT), Venezuela

Students Supported:
M.S.: Douglas Escribano, Meredith Hayes, Li Li, Mariela Lopez-Gasca, Dane Percy

Ph.D.: Diane Greenfield, Jeanne Gulnick, Tung-Yuan Ho, Maria Iabichella-Armas, Xiaona Li, Xueju Lin, Agnieszka Podlaska

Project Description:The Cariaco Basin, located on the northern continental shelf of Venezuela, provides an unparalleled sediment record for paleoceanographic reconstructions of tropical climate over the past several million years, owing to its undisturbed, varved sediments and strong seasonal signals from upwelling. Here our group (Scranton, Taylor & students) is grappling with processes that control diagenesis of biogenic debris in a highly stratified, largely anoxic water column located on a coastal margin. Our studies focus on how the turnover of compounds and elements and bacterial production vary across the O₂/H₂S interface (Ho et al. 2002).

For more information see http://imars.usf.edu/cariaco/index.html & http://www.edimar.org.

Epifluoresent micrograph of bacteria & microflagellates collected in Niskin bottles Photo by G. T. Taylor

Research vessel dedicated to the CARIACO program, B/O Hermano Gines, operated by the Fundacion La Salle on Isla de Margarita, Venezuela