Otago Uni researchers join Ocean Sampling Day

Dr Frederico Baltar is helped by school pupils to take samples off the Otago coast yesterday. Photo / Stephen Jaquiery, ODT

University of Otago researchers joined almost 200 scientists from around the world to head out to take marine samples as part of the second Ocean Sampling Day yesterday.

Dunedin was the only New Zealand city to participate in the initiative. The University of Auckland researchers who took samples for the day last year were unable to do so this year.

University of Otago marine scientist Dr Frederico Baltar spearheaded the initiative in Dunedin.

Research based on the data collected last year was still being compiled, and he expected some research would be published "in the next six months or so".

"It takes a lot of time and analytic power to analyse," he said.

"We're trying to make sense of all these millions and millions and millions of sequences. It takes some time."

He said analysis of the data around microbes living in the sea would bring about "a big advance in the knowledge" about the sea.

"What we're trying to do is explore a part of the world that hasn't been explored very well."

Information related to changes in ocean temperatures as a result of global warming would be a significant part of the knowledge gained from Ocean Sampling Day data.

"We need to study how microbes function to know how they're going to respond to the changes that are happening in the ocean, because they're also going to affect what's going to happen," Dr Baltar said.

Ocean Sampling Day was planned for June 21 around the world because "it's the longest day in the northern hemisphere", he said, laughing.

"Here it's also the coldest, but for them, it's quite warm."

Dr Baltar was joined by five high school pupils on the trip.

The samples will be sent to a marine microbiology laboratory in Germany and then stored at a natural history museum in the United States.