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Filter Feeding

WHOI postdoctoral fellow Mar Nieto-Cid adds seawater to a filtration system in the main laboratory of the research vessel Oceanus during a cruise in the North Atlantic in April 2008.  The system separates low molecular weight organic matter out of the water so that Nieto-Cid and WHOI chemist Dan Repeta can study how the characteristics of dissolved organic matter affect how microbes consume, degrade, and cycle it. “This is a little understood but large piece of the marine carbon cycle,” said Repeta, “and we are investigating what microbes are responsible, and how the chemical composition of the carbon affects microbial activity and diversity.”

(Photo by Alexander Dorsk, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)