(bee buzzing)
(bird cawing)
- [Narrator] The North Cascades are full
of majestic mountains,
with hanging glaciers and sweeping views.
But Robin Kodner goes in search of the exact opposite.
(snow crunching) (clicking)
- [Robin] Come on, this way.
- [Narrator] She is seeking the truly tiny.
- [Robin] Ahah, there we go. Jackpot!
Here's a little patch of pink
and it's definitely pink. Harvey!
Thank you. Lay down.
- [Narrator] Those pink and red patches
you've hiked by in the summer,
they're not somebody's spilled watermelon snow cone.
They're not paint, they're not blood,
they are actually a thriving community of algae.
- The reason that I was encountering
the snow algae in the first place
is I was out climbing a mountain
because I love climbing mountains.
(snow crunching)
And so I feel pretty connected to this environment.
Oh yeah, it's pink up here.
- [Narrator] You might like to think of snow as pure water,
but it really contains a micro-menagerie
of algae, bacteria, fungi and other critters
that have the amazing ability to grow
in freezing environments.
(water splashing)
The thing is, we don't know much about snow algae
or its role in the alpine landscape.
- This way!
(Robin whistles)
- [Narrator] So far Robin, it's the perfect opportunity
to marry her love of the mountains
with her love of microbiology.
- I like to study systems where
we basically don't know anything
and there's every questions out there.
- [Narrator] Robin's research takes
her to mountains around the world.
But on a gray July day, she takes us out
to her primary laboratory:
the snowy wonderland surrounding Mount Baker.
- [Robin] There's a lot of students
at Western Washington University
that are interested in the mountains
and so I like to provide an opportunity
for any student that's interested
to be able to learn how to do science
in the mountains as well.
There's some actually quite bright pink,
this is good.
- [Man] In the notebook, boom.
Then you take off the cap and scoop
with the cap into the tube.
Nice! South shore nightlike.
- [Narrator] Thanks to advances
in field microscopes, we don't even have
to head back to the lab to get a good look
at our colorful quarry.
- [Robin] Such a great image!
Every single sample, when I look at it, I get excited.
I'm like, "Oh, what's gonna be in there?"
Cause you never exactly know what's gonna be in the sample,
so it's like a little mystery each time,
kind of like opening a present.
- [Narrator] In a single drop of water,
there's an entire caste of algal species
acting out a micro drama of transformation.
They start out small and green.
- [Robin] See that swimming?
- [Narrator] As they develop,
they grow whip-like flagella to move about.
- [Robin] Oh, whoa! You can see it.
Okay, let's take a video of this.
These guys are all swimming.
- [Narrator] And they acquire the red pigment
we know them by.
- [Robin] And it is a pigment
that helps serve two purposes within the cell.
One, it kind of is natural sunscreen.
It also acts as an antioxidant.
- [Narrator] The pigment is called astaxanthin.
Beyond being fun to say, it's the same thing
that makes seafood like salmon and shrimp pink.
Here in the mountains, it has earned the algae
the nickname Watermelon Snow.
Some folks even say it tastes like watermelon.
Although, be warned, other microbes
in the snow may have a laxative effect.
- [Robin] So this is really interesting here because
see how the snow is just melting?
So these algae, their habitat is going away.
- You can see little spores
that are right on sides about to melt
and directly adjacent are spores on rocks.
- [Robin] So this area here
is this like natural experiment
where we can see the evolution
of the snow pack and hopefully will be able to see
the different stages of the alkalife cycle
as it responds to the changes in the snow pack.
- [Narrator] Robin is driven by all the things
we don't know about snow algae,
like where does it go when the snow melts?
How does it get back on the snow?
And what causes it to bloom?
- [Robin] It'd be really interesting to know if these guys
are at all... (narrator drowns out speaker)
- [Narrator] These might not seem like big questions
until you consider new research
that shows that algae can speed up
how fast snow packs and glaciers melt.
- [Robin] The maximum amount of algal bloom,
there was an increase of 17% more melt
than without the algae so it can be
a really substantial impact.
(running water)
- [Narrator] Distress the point locally.
The Lower Curtis Glacier hangs across
the valley from where we've been collecting.
Just since Robin became interested in snow algae in 2007,
the glacier has retreated some four-hundred feet.
And glaciers across the region
are disappearing just as fast,
so it's paramount we understand anything
that might play a role, even if it's just
a tiny microbe.
(running water)
(rocks crunching)
But there are only so many mountains Robin
and her team can climb a year,
so she decided to ask for help.
- When we realized that we had this resource
in the outdoor recreation community
and all of the hikers and climbers
and back-country skiers in our region
that could assist in helping us collect samples
and make observations of snow algae.
- [Narrator] So she started mailing out kits
and set up an app called The Living Snow Project.
Now anytime anyone sees Watermelon Snow in the mountains,
even if they don't have a sampling kit,
they can log in and enter their coordinates,
and of course, tag it on Instagram.
The Living Snow Project now gets samples
and data from hundreds of nature lovers.
- Our TL, what were you calling them, TL?
- [Man] I have.
- [Robin] All right, let's look at that one.
What do you think's gonna be in here?
- [Narrator] Each slide reveals
how little we know about life at this scale.
- [Robin] Now that's nice, I like that.
This is a snow fungi. Whoa! What's going on there?
How weird. Who is that guy?
It can be really difficult to identify
these things just by their morphology.
DNA is what would help us say whether or not
this is the same as this and this just hasn't,
this cell hasn't-- - Had it's pigment yet.
- Yeah, exactly.
- [Narrator] So Robin is using modern methods
to sequence the DNA of every species in the samples.
- That's new. Oh, look at that.
It becomes a bit data questioned.
- [Narrator] With the goal of not only finding new species,
- [Robin] It's this guy. This species
is the one that I know now is a unique species
to the Pacific Northwest.
- [Narrator] But also figuring out how
they all interact with each other
and their alpine environment.
- [Robin] I think in general, studying microbial eukaryotes
and algae, I think are some of the most beautiful
of all of those help us realize that, like,
there's so much amazing diversity out there
that I think is really invisible to us
when we're focused so much, on the sort of,
charismatic big things like
mammals and flowering plants.
- [Narrator] Especially when the health
of big things like glaciers might depend in part
on a microscopic world we are just learning to see.