places on earth
Gareth Williams is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Marine Biology based within Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences in the UK. Much of his work involves collecting data from very remote parts of the planet where conditions are challenging and where there are extremely limited resources on hand. This case study deals with the challenges of processing and transporting marine microbe samples collected at remote reefs in the Indian Ocean.
Model organism and research challenges faced
Marine microbes are an extremely interesting group of organisms; what they are and what they are doing can offer valuable insight into the health of marine ecosystems such as coral reefs. Here, Gareth and his team were interested in sampling marine microbes living in the water column above coral reefs within the Chagos Archipelago, a remote group of oceanic atolls and islands spanning over 200 km of latitude in the remote Indian Ocean. In fact, the coral reefs of the Chagos Archipelago are arguably some of the most remote coral reefs on Earth and form one of the world's largest Marine Protected Areas.
After travelling from the UK to Bahrain and on to a military base on the island of Diego Garcia located within the Chagos Archipelago, the team boarded the British Indian Ocean Territory's enforcement vessel, the Grampian Frontier.
This was to be their home and science platform for the next 4 weeks and they set sail to survey 29 reefs across the Archipelago, including collecting near‐reef water microbial samples. The first challenge arose when attempting to carry out sample processing on a ship designed with cold climates and oily rescues in mind, rather than tropical temperatures and sterile laboratory conditions. This presented a significant problem: how to construct a temporary microbiology laboratory where they could process, freeze, and store samples on such a vessel. The second challenge was to then determine how to transport frozen seawater samples (that contained the microbes) back from Chagos, through Bahrain and then on to the UK, without the samples melting in temperatures regularly exceeding 40 °C.
How the challenge was resolved
Fortunately, the team had managed to ship liquid nitrogen ahead of time and the majority of it had amazingly survived the long, warm ship transit from Singapore to Diego Garcia. This allowed them to flash‐freeze seawater samples – a crucial part of the processing protocol. However, things only stay frozen if kept below 0 °C. The ship's cook kindly agreed to allow Gareth to store the frozen samples (and the liquid nitrogen) in a large walk‐in freezer on the back deck of the ship, as long as they were properly contained and away from any food. Problem solved.
The next challenge was to construct a laboratory. The solution was to turn a deck container that had been sweltering and rotting in the heat of the tropics for the best part of a year into a workable space for microbiology – a discipline that demands consistently sterile working conditions. This required ethanol, lots of ethanol, a cloth, and some good old‐fashioned elbow grease. Ethanol, fortunately, was not in short supply. Having sectioned off a portion of the container and cleaned it repeatedly, this appeared to solve the problem – provided Gareth repeated the cleaning frenzy on an almost daily basis. Asking the other scientists nicely to stay away from the area with their wet and dirty equipment was also very crucial.
Then came the end of the journey and the challenge to transport the samples back to the UK and keep them frozen when flights, transfers, and baggage handling are largely out of the team's control. Gareth had a small cooler to aid in this process, but key to its success was keeping it cool throughout the journey and at all costs trying to avoid it sitting on a blistering tropical tarmac runway. The team froze sponges in the last of the liquid nitrogen and packed them in to the cooler around the samples, while also accidently freezing part of a colleagues' shoe! They had also frozen Nalgene bottles full of water to act as ice blocks, but ones that have better longevity than your standard home freezer block (the ice is much thicker). These were also packed in the cooler. However, days prior to this, Gareth had realised the ambitious nature of the journey home and the fear of the samples defrosting. Despite extremely limited internet access, he had managed to get an email out to his post‐doc with an emergency request to organise delivery of 2 kg of dry ice to the hotel in Bahrain where they had planned to spend the 9 hours transit time prior to their UK flight. Dry ice is a solid form of carbon dioxide and is around −80 °C. The two 1 kg dry ice blocks kept the samples frozen all the way to Manchester airport and the following 1.5 hour taxi journey to the safety of a freezer.
Advice for students working under challenging conditions
Always plan ahead and have back‐up plans A, B, and C for fieldwork. Remember to stay safe even when pushed for time under challenging circumstances – it could have been much worse than a frozen shoe! When transporting frozen samples, invest in a good cooler with proper insulation, pack it well (i.e. leave no air spaces and put the most important samples at the bottom), and make your own ice blocks that have a large volume to surface area ratio. Finally, do not rely on luck on the day as Gareth did, but instead organise any additional supplies you may need for your sample journey to be a success well ahead of time.
Equipment and technical support
Ensure the availability of equipment before starting and obtain essential items well in advance of beginning your research project. You may need to allow adequate time to order specialist equipment or materials. If your project requires technical support, arrange this as far in advance as possible.
You need to be as familiar with your equipment as possible before commencing your fieldwork. This includes knowing how reliable it is likely to be under the conditions in which you are working and whether you need to have access to spare components or extra full items of equipment. For example, small mammals will eventually chew through the sides of an aluminium trap and, and they rather more quickly get through the sides of an equivalent plastic trap. Whilst it is possible to patch these up, this is tricky in the field, and therefore spares should be taken. Anything that runs on batteries (e.g. data loggers or light traps) need to be recharged on a regular basis and spare batteries, bulbs, etc. should be available whilst in the field. If you are using multiple pieces of equipment, then you should ensure they are comparable (e.g. different makes of bulb may provide different wavelengths and illumination in light traps, and monitoring equipment from different companies may have different levels of accuracy and resolution). Wherever possible, ensure that identical equipment is used for an individual project. Instrumentation errors may occur if users are unaware of the limits of the equipment (e.g. where attempts are made to estimate between gradations on an analogue scale). Some equipment may require regular calibration against standards of approximately similar values to the variables being measured (e.g. calibrating pH meters at pH 7 for neutral soil and water pH measurements). It is also important to take care of equipment, including protecting it against vandalism, theft, and animal damage (many a moth trap has been trampled by inquisitive cattle when placed in their pasture, and crows and magpies seem to very much enjoy pulling white pitfall cups out of the ground).
Field/laboratory notebook
Keep all your data and notes in an organised format, preferably in a hard‐backed notebook (see Box 1.3) and scan these on a regular basis to retain an electronic second copy. Have a standardised way of recording your data, including everything that might be relevant: the date, weather conditions, and notes of any important points that occur to you whilst carrying out the project. It is useful to record data in the same layout as you will on a computer spreadsheet for analysis
