They’ll never be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, in fact, it’s doubtful they could ever leap a grain of rice, but microbes in the ocean are being billed as the planet’s superheroes by a visiting microbial oceanographer.Dr Craig Carlson, professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) will be giving a lecture at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences (BIOS) on his work studying microbes in Bermuda waters tomorrow. He is also adjunct faculty at BIOS, and worked at BIOS for several years before moving to UCSB.“Although we can’t see them with our naked eye marine microbes are the dominant life forms in our oceans,” said Dr Carlson. “They comprise a staggering 90 percent of the living biomass in the oceans - more than all the krill, fish and whales put together.“They grow at rates many times faster than micro-organisms. As a result of their sheer numbers and rates at which they grow they are responsible for transforming and shaping the distribution of life’s essential elements and help control climate on our planet. Without microbes life as we know it could not persist.”Microbial oceanographers are interested in studying the many different kinds of microbes in the world’s ocean determining who they are and what they do. Microbial oceanography is a rapidly emerging interdisciplinary blend of oceanography, marine microbial ecology and molecular microbiology. Oceanographic approaches are used to provide the necessary environmental context while microbiological and molecular tools help to decipher the biological complexity and function observed in the ocean.Dr Carlson is working on a collaborative project between UCSB, Stephen Giovannoni of Oregon State University (OSU) and Rachael Parsons of BIOS. They are attempting to better understand the role of microbes in natural systems. The work was conducted under the Oceanic Microbial Observatory project, initiated in 1999 by the National Science Foundation.“We study the dynamics of microbes and how they are distributed in the ocean and the Sargasso sea,” said Dr Carlson. “The idea is to try to figure out how microbial processes are controlled by the chemical distributions in the water column.”Dr Carlson’s team conducts microbial research cruises, projects and experiments in Bermuda several times a year. As part of this microbial observatory project, BIOS hosts a three week intensive course in microbial oceanography for graduate level students from all over the world. Dr Carlson said the microbes in the ocean around Bermuda are not particularly unique. What makes Bermuda attractive to him and his team and students from UCSB is the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series (BATS) that has been taking place at BIOS for many years.“It is a great place to work because here is all this other ancillary data that is provided because of this other long going project,” said Dr Carlson. “BATS is a project that was started in 1988.”As part of BATS, each month, since 1988, BIOS scientists have gone out to a particular point in the ocean off Bermuda, Hydrostation S, to take water samples and collect data. Having this data available, allows Dr Carlson to put his own research into microbes into a larger context.“It allows us to see how microbial processes and changes in biogeochemistry are coupled,” he said. “We see changes in the nutrient field over time and over depth. Our goal is to see how changes in the biogeochemistry in the water column effect microbial processes, and how that impacts the distribution of nutrients over time.“We are particularly focused on bacterial plankton. They are free living microbes that are present in all depths of the water column. There are lots of different types and we are trying to get a better field for the diversity, how that changes and how fast they are growing and how they interact with the chemistry of the water.”If the word “microbe” sounds a little threatening, don’t worry, Dr Carlson said the majority of microbes in the environment are benign to humans. In fact, we rely on microbial processes to sustain life on the planet. One thing microbial oceanographers want to know is how climate change and global warming might be impacting microbes.“There are likely to be impacts in the way that the ocean responds to warming,” said Dr Carlson. “Those impacts on the ocean will lead to variation in how microbes are distributed through the water column. In a globally warmed world there is a potential for increased stratification of microbes in the oceans. Density layers will become more stratified and won’t be able to mix as well. Nutrients could be altered and that could have impacts on the microbial assemblages and activity.”Dr Carlson first came to Bermuda in 1987 to work at BIOS as a volunteer. He returned to Bermuda in the late 1980s and 1990s to carry out his doctoral work. He focused his doctoral thesis on microbial oceanography at BATS. He was part of the BIOS staff from 1994 to 2001, but eventually left to teach at UCSB. He is married to Bermudian, Alison Capstick Carlson.The lecture is at BIOS in Hanson Hall at 6.30pm on Tuesday, July 5. Tickets are $10 and available by telephoning BIOS at 297-1880.