As we get closer and closer to the end of the year, we wanted to remind you again
that we have 2023 Microcosmos calendars available at complexlycalendars.com.
They’re filled with beautiful photos taken by our Master of Microscopes James Weiss, and each page
has information about the organism on display, so you know what you’re looking at each month.
So, if you’d like to have beautiful microbes on your wall all throughout 2023, make sure to head
over to complexlycalendars.com and pick yours up today.
Sometimes our journey through the microcosmos feels like an expedition, a voyage filled with
deep dives into the masses of organisms basking under the glow of our microscope.
But at other times, this journey feels like one big game of hide and seek—one that
microbes have been winning in part because for millennia, we didn’t even know we were playing.
Microbes had managed the ultimate
trick of being ubiquitous and yet completely hidden from our view.
Thanks to the microscope, we’ve managed to level the playing field a bit,
rendering them and their world visible.
And with patience, James—our master of microscopes—has become pretty adept at
finding microbes in all sorts of unique locations.
In fact, it feels almost like the tides have shifted in this game of hide and seek,
as if it’s impossible for microbes to truly hide from us anymore.
When we peer through the microscope, it seems like we should always be finding something.
So what does it mean when you don’t find anything. When you gather your samples and excitedly prepare
them for the microscope, only to find a landscape lacking in the life you expected to find?
That’s the question that James faced recently after receiving samples from
a very interesting place: the bottom of a Norwegian fjord.
The researchers who sent James the samples are studying the jellyfish that live in the fjords.
But of course, the organisms he was interested in were on the much smaller side of things.
Fjords are the result of ancient glaciers that carved out valleys and filled them with water.
The water in fjords can run very deep, sometimes on the order of thousands of meters.
And the steep cliffs that run along the sides add to the sense
that you are suspended in the middle of a world that is immense compared to you.
As small as we are compared to these depths and heights, there is a tinier world buried
in all this—one that James was excited to see when he received around 30 tubes of
sediment samples gathered from depths ranging from 50 meters to a crushing 1300 meters.
But when James opened the first tube, he had to contend with something unexpected:
there was no water in the sediment.
And when he went to dig into the samples,
they were relatively barren, with only a few organisms appearing.
This might not surprise you.
After all, these are cold, dark waters,
conditions that should make it hard for organisms to survive, let alone thrive.
Yet here we are, talking about fjords, and there are several minutes left in this video.
So surely James found something, right?
Yes, yes he did.
This is our tour through the depths of a fjord, told in microbes.
Let’s begin with the first 200 meters of the fjord, the area called the “sunlight” zone.
As you might guess from that name, this is an area with light, making it the ideal zone
for organisms that rely on sunlight to drive photosynthesis, like the beautiful diatoms.
In the Arctic fjords of Svalbard,
these surface waters are usually shaped by meltwater that comes from glaciers,
as well as runoff from land, making them lower in salinity compared to the water beneath them.
As you dive deeper, you can see some of the remains from organisms that prefer those upper
waters—like these frustules that came from sediment samples taken at 322 meters deep,
placing them in the area called the “twilight” zone.
This region starts at around 200 meters deep and goes down to around
1000 meters deep, and while some photons are able to penetrate these waters,
they are not enough to guarantee the survival of photosynthetic organisms.
But that doesn’t mean other creatures can’t find a way to survive, like these foraminifera.
And descending beyond the “twilight” zone takes you to...yes, you guessed it, the “midnight” zone.
There is no light here, just dark and cold waters that, at least in Svalbard,
accumulate salt released by sea ice.
Again, we find some of the frustules left behind by diatoms that lived in the sunlight zone.
But we also find more unusual sights. Like this...thing,
which we think is a tube built by a tubeworm.
Running almost a centimeter in length,
the tube was assembled from bits and pieces of sponge spicules and foraminifera shells.
It’s like a collage crafted out of other fjord microbes,
telling us more about what else lived in those waters.
It’s fascinating, but not surprising, to find the
populations of microbes changing as you dive deeper into the water.
After all, microbial communities are shaped by light, temperature,
salinity, and other factors in all sorts of bodies of water,
whether we’re talking about a fountain, a puddle, a pond, or a fjord.
We all have preferences for the types of conditions we want to live in,
and microbes are no different.
With that said, there was one creature that we seemed to observe at every depth of water.
In fact, it was often the only living thing James could find.
Can you guess what it is?
It is none other than the nematode! And perhaps that should not be so surprising.
They are, after all, one of the most abundant organisms on the planet.
And interestingly, the nematodes that James found from the deeper parts of
the sea had little structures in their bodies that looked like oil deposits,
though we’re not exactly sure what they are or what their function might be.
Perhaps today we’ve managed a few small victories in this ongoing game of hide and seek.
But there are connotations to these games that extend beyond just simple curiosity and joy.
The microbes that live in these fjords are part of a complex ecosystem.
They cycle elements like carbon, sulfur, and iron, and they serve as food for other creatures.
So as glaciers retreat due to climate change,
these communities will have to contend with a shifting landscape.
The way water circulates through the fjord could change,
bringing different nutrients to the surface or lifting sediment that blocks more light.
Or it may bring some other complication for these microbes that we can’t yet anticipate.
Scientists are seeking out and studying the microbial communities in fjords so they can
better understand what these changes will look like, to decipher what survival and adaptation
looks like at the microbial scale and how that translates to the world we experience.
Because microbes will survive.
They’ve survived plenty of extinctions already, adapting to the new worlds
that arise after and shaping them for the evolving forms that join them.
Thank you for coming on this journey with us as we explore the unseen world that surrounds us.
And speaking of surviving, the reason this channel can survive is thanks to
the people you’re seeing on the screen right now.
These are some of our Patreon patrons, the people who have decided to directly support this channel
over at patreon.com/journeytomicro, and we thank them so much for their continued support.
If you want to see more from our master of microscopes,
James Weiss, and why wouldn’t you, check out Jam & Germs on Instagram,
and if you want to see more from us, there is always a subscribe button somewhere nearby.