A Bermuda-based oceanographer is being recognised for his decades of research.

Dr Craig Carlson is part of the team at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) and a professor of microbial oceanography at the University of California Santa Barbara.

His work involves researching some of the tiniest organisms in Bermuda’s waters.

He has spent decades investigating the invisible forces shaping the global carbon cycle: millions of bacteria in every drop of seawater consuming carbon compounds dissolved into the ocean like sugar into tea.

Research into the global carbon cycle has gained special significance in the field of climate change research, especially with Japanese researchers last month calling 2014 the hottest year on record.

For his study of marine microbial life forms and their interaction with carbon compounds, Dr Carlson has become this year’s recipient of the G Evelyn Hutchinson award, the American Society for Limnology and Oceanography has announced.

This “honours a limnologist or oceanographer who has made considerable contributions to knowledge, and whose future work promises a continued legacy of scientific excellence”, BIOS said yesterday.

“I am very honoured to receive this award,” Dr Carlson said. “It is shared with the outstanding collaborators I’ve had at BIOS and working at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study site.”

Bermuda-based scientists have collected physical, chemical and biological data for 25 years at the site — a station out in the open ocean that monitors a 300-metre column of the sea.

Dr Carlson has been using the site to investigate the global carbon cycle.

During his research, he and his colleagues have observed organic carbon building up in the sea’s surface and then mixing with deeper water.

Minuscule marine organisms can break down carbon compounds in the sea’s surface, resulting in more carbon dioxide being pumped into the planet’s atmosphere.

But carbon compounds that are not consumed can be taken deep into the ocean and effectively sequestered from the surface — sometimes for centuries.

Exploring how microbes respond to organic compounds at different depths and times is therefore crucial to understanding the role of the ocean in the cycle of carbon, and climate change.

The Hutchinson award will be presented at the Society’s annual conference in Grenada, Spain, this month.