Annelie Skoog studies the natural make-up of the world's oceans

Photo: Peter Morenus

Annelie Skoog, assistant professor of marine science, explores the natural compounds in the world's oceans.

Sometimes, even the most interesting expeditions require a diversion. After all, researchers don't live by science alone. Ask Annelie Skoog, assistant professor of marine sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn's Avery Point campus.

In 1991, she spent nine weeks aboard a Swedish icebreaker in the company of 70 scientists. It was summer and one day, after weeks at sea, the entire team decided it was time for a party. They went on to the ice, cranked up the grill, played a little soccer, and cooled down with a refreshing dip. Just to be safe, though, everybody who took to the water wore a line tethering them to the ship. Even on a bright, sunny day in the heart of August, the water at the North Pole is mighty, mighty cold and it can have an unwanted effect on the heart.

Skoog can tell you a lot about the naturally occurring compounds of the world's aquatic environments. In addition to the Arctic, she can lay claim to having examined the waters of the Antarctic, the Baltic and the Gulf of Mexico. In the north Pacific, she has studied the cold, lightless depths of the hellish world of deep thermal vents, ominously known as "black smokers," that boil along the pressure ridges where continental plates collide. And in the Mediterranean near Sicily, on the appropriately named island of Vulcano, she has studied life around similar vents in waters so shallow she could wade to them.

What Skoog's explorations have in common is her primary area of research, the study of dissolved organic matter and how efficiently — or inefficiently — the Earth's oceans cycle carbon and nitrogen. The environments and the various cycling processes she has studied are as diverse as the many remote locations she has visited.

Consider the Vulcano research. "Hydrothermal vents are extreme environments," Skoog says. "They have high temperatures and unusual chemical conditions, either of which can kill bacteria. Despite the fact that the temperatures are high around the vents at Vulcano, bacteria live there and they derive their energy from inorganic and organic compounds."

This is important for a number of reasons, she says. Insight into how unique bacteria survive in the pressure cooker environment surrounding thermal vents can help scientists understand how the world's first microbial life flourished and set the stage for life as we know it.

Photo: Peter Morenus

Skoog enjoys sharing her research activities with students at UConn's Avery Point campus.

More immediately, the oceans are important barometers for how the planet's ecosystems are managing the excess of carbon dioxide generated by the ongoing consumption of fossil fuels. What Skoog and her colleagues learn may have profound implications for understanding how humanity is changing the environment and whether we can help the Earth's ecosystem remain healthy.

"We can't account for all of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says Skoog. "We know how much there should be, but studies show the levels are not that high. So the carbon dioxide has to go somewhere."

That somewhere, clearly, is the oceans. However there is not much information about what happens to the carbon dioxide when it dissolves into the oceans. Scientists know some of it is consumed by algae, the bottom rung of the food ladder. But once it becomes organic matter, they don't know how long it takes before it is released back into the environment. Moreover, there is not yet much research about how different climatic conditions affect the process and what the implications may be.

The Long Island Sound, for instance, is notorious for the fact that its configuration limits how quickly it recycles its water volume. As a result, the oxygen levels in the western part of the sound's waters are low. During late summer each year, as marine bacteria consume the oxygen in order to degrade organic matter, the western end of the sound often becomes hypoxic, oxygen diminished, or anoxic, oxygen depleted. Skoog is among the scientists studying how this impacts the sediments in the sound, where a great deal of algae-derived particulate matter ends up.

The world's oceans are crucial to managing the carbon in the ecosystem. What Annelie Skoog's research often shows is that an extraordinary range of factors impact how well they cycle carbon and nitrogen. Skoog and her colleagues are trying to understand how this occurs. In the process, they are learning how the oceans work, in the most basic sense. What they learn may well be essential information in the efforts of scientists to preserve the health of our planet. — Jim H. Smith