2007-08 V3 CEAMARC-CASO Samples for germanium and boron group

Box corer - diatom scrape. Beam Trawl AAD - sponge sample. PHY - phytoplankton sample taken from inline surface seawater system.

Van Veen grab - sediment scrape. WAT - surface water sample passed through 0.4 um filter. Description column explains the samples in more detail - eg information on what size fraction the phytoplankton were filtered at.

Litres column describes the volume of water that was filtered. Depth is in metres. Time is local time.

Temperature is degrees C. Storage location was for shipboard use only. The "other" column details any extra information that may be useful to the sample for example #2153 refers to a sample id code that the French CEAMARC group was using to code for their samples. Our aim for this voyage was to collect surface phytoplankton and water samples across a transect of the Southern Ocean, and to collect benthic sponge and coral samples in Antarctica, to (i) measure the Ge/Si and Si isotope composition to construct a nutrient profile across the Southern Ocean, and to test and calibrate these parameters as proxies for silica utilisation; and (ii) measure the B isotope composition to test the potential of biogenic silica to be used as a seawater pH proxy.

We collected phytoplankton, sponges, diatom sediment scrapes and water samples at strategic locations to ensure that the entire water column was surveyed. The data that were collected were used in collaboration with palaeoenvironmental data from sediment cores and experimental culture experiments on diatoms and sponges to gain a better understanding of historical distributions of Silicon and pH in the Southern Ocean.