Into the deep – exploring the role of coastal shelf production for carbon storage in the deep ocean

May 18, 2022

The MARIA S. MERIAN in Bremerhaven. Photo: MARUM, University of Bremen

Researcher from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology Bremen, University of Oldenburg, and Alfred Wegener Institute are currently getting ready to sail with the research vessel MARIA S. MERIAN to the ocean region off northwest Ireland. As part of MARUM’s Cluster of Excellence, The Ocean Floor – Earth’s Uncharted Interface, they are going to study how the ocean take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the deep ocean.

Recently the researchers discovered that a substantial fraction of organic carbon that was produced on the coastal shelf off northwest Africa was transported to and stored in the deep ocean. This could be an important mechanism that is mitigating anthropogenic carbon emissions. However, since studies that include both the coastal shelfs and the open ocean as well as the water column and the sediments are very rare, we do not know how important the transport of carbon from productive coastal areas to the deep sea are for carbon storage in the oceans.

With this sea-going expedition, the researchers will investigate the role of coastal production for deep ocean carbon storage in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean.

The team will report about their research and the expedition MSM 107 in a ship’s log.

Link to the expedition ship's logbook