One of the drawbacks to visiting Papua New Guinea in the wet season . . . it rains! A lot!

The dive deck of the Stardancer did double duty as a workshop and laboratory.

Jan checking out one of the sampling locations. The vent gas is flowing through sediment, hydrothermal precipitates, and coral reef.

D'Arcy floating over vent #4, our main sampling location. The water is extremely hot coming out of the vent (you can see the difference in refraction of the hot water compared to the cold seawater, as a result in differences in density). The soft and hard corals around the vent have to cope with occasionally being bathed in this hot water, as well as the high arsenic concentrations.

Vent #4, up close and personal. The orange precipitates are adsorbing arsenic from the vent fluid, and their formation may be mediated by microorganisms. Notice the green photosynthetic biofilms growing very close to the source of hot water.

A home-made incubation chamber for microbial growth experiments. Inside the cage are test tubes containing growth media designed to capture arsenic metabolizers. The tubes were inoculated with vent fluids and sediments, and are now being warmed by the vent fluid to incubate.

Jan using the pore fluid sampler at site 4B-4. Each syringe pulls pore fluid (within the sediments) at 10cm increments. These fluid samples were later preserved for analysis of organic carbon concentrations.

Core 4A-2, the emphasis of the molecular biology work that has been done to date.

Core 4A-2 as it's being cut open.

A view of the inside of core 4A-2. Different colors in the sediment likely represent different redox zones and possibly different microbial communities.

Jan photographing a core after it's been cut open. Careful photodocumentation was done for each sample.

D'Arcy sampling sediment from an open core. DNA was later extracted from these samples and used to identify the microorganisms living in the sediments on our vent transects.

A view of the indoor molecular biology laboratory. DNA was extracted and preserved while in the field, then returned home to the United States.

A view of the outdoor laboratory. Gas sampling, microbial inoculations, and dissolved organic carbon sampling/preservation was preformed at this station.