A very important goal for this expedition and follow-on work on shore is to examine the way in which rocks, fluids, and life interact at Lost City to make it such a special place. For example, we know that the interaction of the fluids and the rocks should produce methane, but do the microbes also produce this gas? Do the microbes help the carbonate structures to form?. How old is Lost City?. To get at questions such as these requires multiple kinds of sampling devices, and a multitude of analytical instruments both on and offshore. On the pages listed below, we will share with you some of the unique “toys” and tools that we will have onboard to both sample and analyze the fluids. The sea can be a difficult friend, however, tossing the ship around in seas. As you will see on the following pages many analyses require very sophisticated, complex instruments that would not survive well on an unstable platform. So have also shared with you some of the machines that we use on land.
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Ship-board Samplers
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Seafloor Sensors
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Shore-based Analyses
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