Fating Carbon in the South Pacific Ocean - Marine Microbial Communities and Carbon Cycle Dynamics

Watch a 46-minute scientific lecture exploring marine microbial communities and their role in carbon cycling across the Pacific Ocean. Dive into Daniel Muratore's research from the Santa Fe Institute, examining how marine microorganisms function across diverse environments from productive fisheries to nutrient-scarce habitats. Learn about a 2024 field campaign that collected data from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Equatorial Pacific, and South Pacific Subtropics, combining physical surveys, microbial community observations, and isotope incorporation experiments. Explore the relationships between oceanographic conditions, ecosystem-scale allometrics, and biogeochemical rates in the ocean carbon cycle. Discover new insights into viral and grazing mortality's impact on marine microbial ecosystem functioning, and understand how allometric and temperature scaling affect carbon fate in Earth's largest ocean basins.