Scaling down the ocean: Media

About the Expedition

There is something about going to sea: It is exciting, adventurous, and when you try to map the ocean’s biological, chemical and physical properties, you get a feeling of the vastness of the oceans. The oceans cover more than 70 % of our planet’s surface and have an average depth of almost 4 km. While this enormous scale is one of the most fascinating aspects of ocean science, it is a big challenge for us scientists: The ocean currents and constant overturning of water masses make it nearly impossible to study just ‘one’ spot.

As a consequence, we often collect a few litres of sea water and manipulate them in the lab. ‘Lab experiments’ are informative and give you an idea about individual model organisms or single aspects of the ocean biogeochemical cycles. But these micro-scale experiments have one big problem. They are like watching a monkey in a zoo: It gives you an idea about e single monkey, but it will never quite tell you what a jungle is all about.

What is needed is something of intermediate scale: a ‘mesocosm’ (from Greek mesos: 'middle' + kosmos: ‘world').

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