Zetahunters: The 2013 Bigelow Summer Café Scientifique Series Begins July 2

East Boothbay, Maine - Bigelow Laboratory will begin its 2013 summer Café Scientifique series at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 2 with a talk by Dr. David Emerson, a Senior Research Scientist in the Bigelow Geomicrobiology Research Laboratory. His talk, titled Zetahunters: Anatomy of an Expedition to a League beneath the Sea, is at 6 p.m. on the main floor of the Boothbay Harbor Opera House, 86 Townsend Avenue in Boothbay Harbor. It is the first of nine Café Scientifique events scheduled for this summer.

“My talk will focus as much on the ‘how’ we go to sea as much as on the ‘why’ we go to sea,” said Emerson. “I’ll be talking about the fleet of ships available for scientific research, the vehicles we have for exploring the ocean depths, and the day-to-day challenges of making complex technologies work on a rolling deck, as well as the excitement and apprehension of responding to circumstances and getting to do science on the fly.”

For sixteen days last March and April, Emerson and members of his Bigelow research team were among 19 microbiologists and biogeochemists on board the R/V Thompson in the Pacific Ocean, working to discover the secrets of the Zetaproteobacteria, microbes that live off iron-rich fluids coming from a submarine volcano called Loihi Seamount, just off the coast of the Big Island in Hawaii. The multi-institutional research crew’s “underwater workhorses” were two deep submergence vehicles deployed to investigate how and why different types of these bacteria are distributed on the Seamount, and how they shape the microbial communities in their habitat.

“Zetas may be tiny, but they’re worthy of interest—they’ve been around for a long time and they may once have been among the most dominant life forms on Earth,” says Emerson

According to team member Cat Wolner, “by understanding Zetas, the Emerson lab and their collaborators on this cruise are pushing forward our understanding of life on Earth, and maybe even beyond. Zetas are potentially ancient organisms that are highly evolved for using iron as an energy supply, and may be analogues for life in extreme, iron-rich environments on other planets.”

Emerson holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Cornell University, and received a Bachelor’s degree in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic. His research focuses on bacteria that live by consuming iron in environments as varied as the deep-sea hydrothermal vents of undersea volcanoes, shipwrecks, and the root systems of wetland plants. These life forms may have influenced the biogeochemistry of the early Earth through precipitation of rust and the creation of banded iron formations, the world’s primary source of iron ore.

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences is an independent, non-profit center for global ocean research, ocean science education, and technology transfer.  A recognized leader in Maine's emerging innovation economy, the Laboratory’s research ranges from microbial oceanography to the large-scale processes that drive ocean systems and global environmental conditions. The Laboratory’s Café Scientifique talks are free and open to the public, with beer, wine, and sodas available for purchase. The complete 2013 summer Café Scientifique program is available on the Laboratory’s website (www.bigelow.org).

Photo: Dr. David Emerson with Jason II, one of the deep submergence remotely operated vehicles used during the Zetahunters expedition. Photo by Jarrod Scott.