22 THE SCIENTIST | the-scientist.com
NOTEBOOKUnlike previous Antarctic studies, how-
ever, Vigo’s research found that this
sleep loss was coupled with a change
in napping behavior: the Argentinians
regularly took an afternoon nap at the
station, but average nap duration grew
from 104 minutes in March up to more
than 150 minutes by the end of win-
ter, before falling back down to around
122 minutes in November (Sci Rep,
9:10875, 2019).
“It sounds like they are supplementing
their nighttime sleep with having a nap,”
says Siobhan Banks, a sleep researcher
at the University of South Australia who
has investigated the physiological and
psychological effects of naps. Observ-
ing how nap length changes with season
can’t be done in her lab, where studies
range from a few days to several weeks,
says Banks, who was not involved in the
study. “Antarctica is an amazing opportu-
nity, because it’s almost like a living lab.”
Arendt, who also did not participate
in the research but reviewed the paper
for publication, suggests that the lack of
much prior research on napping behav-
ior reflects cultural differences in atti-
tudes toward the practice of daytime
slumber. “It’s more of an Argentine habit
to take a nap than a British one,” says
Arendt. “A lot of the routine of the Brit-
ish base is designed [for] work during
the d ay, sleep during the night,” which
doesn’t allow much opportunity for
naps. She adds that the consideration of
how cultural differences affect Antarctic
sleep behavior is one of the main contri-
butions of this work.
“Cultural habits may play a big role
for adaptation and how you react,”
agrees Gro Mjeldheim Sandal, a psy-
chologist from the University of Bergen
who has studied human performance
and adaptation in multiple extreme
environments, including Antarctica,
but was not involved in the current
project. “A s the authors pointed out,
the majority of the studies... had
been based on American or Western
subjects. So this adds to the literature
in a very important w a y.”
—Alejandra ManjarrezLava Life
When Kīlauea volcano on the Big Island
of Hawaii began spewing tons of molten
lava into the ocean in May 2018, micro-
bial oceanographers Dave Karl of the
University of Hawaiʻi and Ricardo Lete-
lier of Oregon State University started
to wonder what effects it was having on
the nearshore marine ecosystem. Cer-
tain nutrients in volcanic ash and lava
are known to support phytoplankton
growth, so the pair figured that new life
might sprout up around Kīlauea as a
result of the eruption.
Letelier, who studies marine micro-
organisms’ responses to environmental
disturbance, is used to monitoring satel-
lite data for patches of chlorophyll that
could suggest the presence of phytoplank-
ton. After speaking with Karl, he began
pulling satellite images showing lava
entering the water around Kīlauea. “ Ve r y,
very soon, we started seeing the evolution
of a long, long filament that seemed to be
chlorophyll,” Letelier recalls.
Chlorophyll plumes a couple of miles
long and a mile wide often form along
shorelines when water sweeps coastal
nutrients into the ocean. But this plume
“was over one hundred miles in length
and... about fifteen to twenty miles wide,
and it was extending straight out into the
ocean,” says Sam Wilson, an oceanogra-
pher at the University of Hawaiʻi (UH)
who works with Karl. “It was much bigger
than anything we’d previously observed... and it was much more prominent.”
Clearly, this wasn’t a normal near-shore
bloom. The researchers decided they
needed to send a team to Hawaii to fig-
ure out what was going on.
Wilson speedily rounded up 17 other
scientists while Kīlauea continued pour-
ing 50 to 100 cubic meters of lava into
the ocean every second. “We had to mobi-
lize quickly, within about a two-week
period,” he says. On Friday, July 13, the
team boarded an early-morning flight
from Honolulu to Hilo to meet UH’s now-
retired research vessel, informally known
as the KOK (Ka`imikai-O-Kanaloa), wait-
ing to take them out to Kīlauea.
The ship left port at 8:00 a.m., and
just before noon, the scientists saw the
first sign of the erupting volcano: lava-
induced haze, or laze, billowing above the
Big Island’s eastern point, Cape Kumu-
kahi. “Once [we] could see that, we got
very excited,” Wilson says. “When we got
closer, we could see the water discolor-
ation simply from standing on the deck of
the ship and looking over the side. That’s
when we really knew that we were in lava-
impacted water.”
Over the next 12 hours scientists fran-
tically collected water samples as effi-
ciently as possible. They deployed a rosette
of 10-liter bottles to capture samples at
various depths, and took breaks over the
next four days only for occasional sleep and
to cruise to new sampling sites. Letelier,
who was monitoring satellite data from
his office back in Oregon, helped steer the
expedition to patches of ocean that seemed
rich in different types of phytoplankton.Based on the colors he’d seen in the
satellite images, Letelier anticipated
that some areas of the chlorophyll plume
would be dominated by diatoms, while
others would contain mostly green flag-
ellates such as Phaeocystis and other
genera. He directed the team aboard the
KOK to sample multiple regions, and
analyses done both on the ship and back
at researchers’ home labs soon showed he
was right. The researchers also identified
other, less abundant groups, confirming
the presence of a massive phytoplankton
bloom apparently triggered by the erup-
tion (Science, 365:1040–44, 2019).
“A s far as I know... the idea that vol-
canic lava could influence phytoplankton
blooms was completely n e w,” says Colum-When you’re on board,
it’s hard to think straight.
You’re so tired, sometimes
you’re sick, sometimes
you’re trying to coordinate
eighteen scientists.
—Sam Wilson, University of Hawaiʻi