|Bio Team at work| Several others are also involved with the Bio
Team’s work and together they have collected many samples to
distribute to different labs once we return to port. The team
instructs Jason’s pilot which animals to sample using the
vehicle’s manipulator arms. The pilot then places the samples in
the biobox on the front of the vehicle and closes the lid before
surfacing. Smaller animals such as shrimp he collects with a
device aptly named the “slurp,” which sucks up anything near its
nozzle, much like a vacuum cleaner. After every Jason dive, the
team forms an assembly line, where they take an inventory of
their samples, image them, and slice up pieces of the animals to
be used for genetic study later. Verity Nye described the
process: “First we preserve the whole animal in formalin to take
it back to our lab. We look at the whole animal very closely to
see if it is something already described or if it’s something
new to science.” |Tubeworm out of its tube. The black part full
of symbiotic bacter