Cruise Participants
Lead Investigators
Ken Buesseler
Ken Buesseler is marine geochemist at WHOI. He is the lead scientist for the Carbon and Climate theme in the OTZ Project, where his research focuses on how carbon moves through the mesopelagic.
Heidi Sosik
Heidi Sosik is biologist at WHOI. She is the lead scientist on the OTZ project where her research focuses on connecting the surface ocean with the mesopelagic
Joel Llopiz
Joel Llopiz is a biologist at WHOI. He is the the lead scientist for the Life Histories and Behavior theme in the Ocean Twilight Zone Project where his research focuses on fish and other life in the mesopelagic.
PhD Students and Postdocs
Kayla Gardner
Kayla's research focus is on twilight zone food webs. On the ship, Kayla will help process fish and zooplankton samples from MOCNESS.
John San Soucie
John's research focus is on autonomy and modeling species-level observations of plankton. On the ship John will be working with ISIIS, a shadowgraph imaging system.
Henry Holm
Henry’s research focuses on the composition of sinking carbon. He will be sampling water from the CTD for many different chemical properties.
Helena McMonagle
Helena's research focuses on the role twilight zone fish play in transporting carbon. On the ship she will help process fish and zooplankton samples from MOCNESS.
Laetitia Drago
On the ship Laetitia will be in charge of several imaging instruments: Underwater Vision Profiler 5 and 6 as well as a Planktoscope.
Christina Fernandez
On the ship Cristina will help process fish and zooplankton samples from MOCNESS.
Elena Romero
Elena will be working with the Twilight Zone Explorer, a new technology developed by the OTZ Project.
Scientists and Engineers
Jessica Kozik
Jessica will deploy the autonomous vehicle called the Twilight Zone Explorer.
Julia Cox
Julia will help process fish and zooplankton samples from MOCNESS.
Jackson Sugar
Jackson will be responsible for the MINION floats, burn wire release mechanisms for sediment traps and acoustic tracking of deployed assets.
Justin Ossolinski
Justin will be looking at dissolved gases in seawater using a custom mass spec to analyze real-time O2/Ar and collecting samples for triple oxygen isotope analyses.
Alexi Shalapyonok
Alexi will be analyzing phytoplankton composition and abundance using imaging capabilities of 2 FCBs - one for continuous in-line sampling and one for discrete CTD samples.
Erin Frates
Erin will be sampling seawater from the water column from the CTD rosette and filtering it to collect environmental DNA for animal biodiversity analyses in the Govindarajan laboratory.
Communications
Marley Parker
Marley is the expedition communication lead. She will film and photograph daily operations, and publish blog posts about the science happening aboard the Sarmiento.
Michelle Cusolito
Michelle is a former teacher and an award-winning children’s book author. During this cruise, she will be researching to write a book for middle schoolers and writing cruise updates. Learn more about Michelle at michellecusolito.com.
David Liittschwager
David will be making photographs for a National Geographic Magazine story about the Twilight Zone.