What have the scientists on the New Horizon learned from their trips to the Gulf of California?
(This is the third expedition.) Last summer the water sampling and chemical analysis revealed something very interesting about the waters of the Sea of Cortez. The organism we study, Emiliania huxleyi, and other alkenone-producing phytoplankton living in surface waters, seem to grow without conventional fertilizers (nutrients) like nitrate and ammonia. We speculated that fertilizers required for their growth were obtained from the work of other phytoplankton that are capable of fixing nitrogen gas. What’s a nitrogen-fixer? • Nitrogen-fixers are plants that live on nitrogen taken directly from the air or soil. • Most plants can’t do this because nitrogen is difficult to break down. Nitrogen-fixers “eat” nitrogen and break it down into more digestible forms (into nitrate and ammonia) for other plants to use. The nitrogen fixation process occurs on land, also. Peanuts, lupine and scotch broom are well-known nitrogen fixers. This same process occurs in the sea, but microscopic plants perfo
