Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident is traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the seventh and final blog post detailing this voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com. But the next leg of the cruise begins now: a deep water exploration of undersea volcanism.

RV ATLANTIS, OFF THE COAST OF CHILE—On a hot, windy day in late January, a group of 28 scientists stood on a pier in northern Chile, luggage in hand, scientific equipment packedin cases and storage vans beside them. Many of them were tired andstressed; the 24-hour journey from the US to Chile had been fraught with delays, lost luggage and missing equipment.

Now, as the RV Atlantis slowly approached the dock to tie up, the group had to prepare for a month-long voyage into the Eastern Tropical South Pacific (ETSP). They were searching for traces of nitrogen in the water column, and for the organisms that could break its tough triple bond into usable biomass.

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Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the sixth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com.

Imagine you’re in space, floating high above the Earth. Picture the world’s oceans, glimmering sapphire under the heat of the sun and the protection of the ozone layer. Look closer, there’s a patch of brown in the middle of all that blue. It’s a bloom of phytoplankton called Trichodesmium, a “world famous” nitrogen fixer.

Shaped like pieces of human hair or filament, tricho floats on the ocean’s surface in huge brownish patches called colonies, which are sometimes large enough to be seen by satellites in space. Their slender shape has earned these multicellular, photosynthesizing creatures the nickname, “saw dust of the sea.”

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Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the fifth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com.

RV ATLANTIS, OFF THE COAST OF CHILE—Like many people around the world Saturday, the crew and science party aboard the RV Atlantis woke to the news of the earthquake in Chile and the tsunami threat in the Pacific. Throughout the morning news slowly trickled in—first from a deckhand who’d been perusing the news online, then from loved ones as the e-mails of concern began pouring in. Mates standing watch on the bridge even answered a few phone calls from worried parents--a rather unusual occurrence considering calls to the ship must be made via satellite and cost upwards of a $1 a minute.

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Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the fourth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com.

RV ATLANTIS MAIN DECK—Of the metals readily available on Earth, iron is one of the most abundant. We come in contact with iron in some form every day—whether it's in the air we breathe, or the metals we use in our tools, in our buildings and our vehicles. It's even in our bodies.

The world's oceans get much of their iron supply from deserts. Winds carry dust from the wilds of Africa and the dunes of the Middle East and seed vast bodies of water with this essential nutrient for photosynthesis. But, as scientists are learning, the winds can only carry dust so far, and portions of the southeastern Pacific are a virtual dead zone of iron.

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Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the fourth blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for ScientificAmerican.com

RV ATLANTIS MAIN DECK—For years scientists have thought that the amount of nitrogen coming into and out of the world's oceans was relatively equivalent, creating a "balanced" and naturally maintained budget. But this theory has been based on a relatively small amount of data obtained from only a few of the world's oceans, leaving room for scientists to question how accurate the model is. 

"It's not clear whether the marine nitrogen budget is balanced or not," geoscientist Angela Knapp said in a recent shipboard science meeting. "Are we underestimating nitrogen fixation? Are we overestimating denitrification?"

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Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the third blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for Scientific American.com.

The work of getting the conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) measurement device safely on deck may be complete, but for many in the science party, the real work is now just beginning.

For Shannon Tronick, it's critical that she gather her allotted water samples and get busy filtering. She's measuring chlorophyll so she can plot where the chlorophyll peaks within the water column.

Once it's safe to go out on deck, Tronick grabs her opaque plastic bottles and gets to work. First, she rinses out the bottles with water from the cast to make sure the sample doesn't get contaminated. Then she fills her bottles, taking about one liter (at 10 depths) of 240 total liters collected in the cast, and heads inside to begin her analysis. 

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Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the second blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for Scientific American.com.

RV ATLANTIS MAIN DECK—The winch makes a whirring sound as it slowly winds the quarter-inch galvanized wire out of the water, through the block and onto the drum. Rigged over the side of the ship, the sturdy wire extends deep below the water's surface where it is attached to a round metal frame holding plastic bottles and various sensors.

Two scientists, outfitted in hard hats and life preservers, stand ready to steer the rosette carefully onboard. As the rosette nears the surface, they each lash guidelines to huge eyehooks and cleats on the steel deck. Nearby, Shipboard Science Support Technician (SSSG) Dave Sims reaches for his walkie-talkie: "Bridge-deck. We're almost at the surface."

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Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a monthlong voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the first blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for Scientific American.com.

20 00.0457S x 084'59.9745W

It's momentarily quiet in the computer lab as a cluster of scientists stare intently at a computer monitor, watching thin lines of red, blue, green and brown slowly appear on a grid.

"Is this the right measurement?" one scientist asks another, his finger pointing at one of the squiggly lines on the screen.

Suddenly the group erupts into chatter as someone runs to get a printout with yesterday's readings. The measurements are right on, and the group heaves a collective sigh of relief. The day is off to a good start, and everyone disperses to their collective spaces to analyze and log the myriad of data they're collecting.

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Editor's Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler  is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation's 50-foot Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (aka "Pacific garbage patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita crew left Long Beach, Calif., on June 10 with a plan to cross the International Date Line and investigate regions of reported high plastic concentrations, northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. This is his eighth blog post for Scientific American.com.

6,714 miles traveled

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Editor's Note: Scuba instructor and underwater videographer Drew Wheeler is traveling on board the Algalita Marine Research Foundation's 50-foot Ocean Research Vessel, Alguita, on a two-month voyage to sample and study portions of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Subtropical Gyre (aka "Pacific garbage patch"). Wheeler and the rest of the Alguita crew left Long Beach, Calif., on June 10 with a plan to cross the International Date Line and investigate regions of reported high plastic concentrations, northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. This is his seventh blog post for Scientific American.com.

Miles traveled: 4,735

As a SCUBA instructor for Surf and Sea in Haleiwa, Oahu, I'm able periodically to swim with Hawaii's favorite spinner dolphins and have even had the opportunity to see bottlenose dolphins.

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