MBARI Conducts Deep-Sea Animals Respiration Research

The Midwater Ecology lab is conducting research from the R/V Western Flyer this week, using ROV Doc Ricketts to deploy and recover the Midwater Respirometry System (MRS).

Project lead on the MRS, Kim Reisenbichler uses the MRS to measure respiration of deep-sea animals in their habitat, a more accurate way of studying their oxygen consumption than in the lab where environmental conditions are drastically different.

The goal on this cruise is to fill the sample buckets with deep-sea mysids (shrimp-like crustaceans) and hang the MRS on a mooring at 3000 meters depth.

The MRS measures the respiration of these deep-sea animals at depth for 48 hours. He is running the respiration experiments in 2 different levels of CO2 to simulate how future ocean conditions may impact respiration rates.

Press Release, August 07, 2014