Puerto Rico Coring

The fundamental objective of this project is to determine how the subseafloor microbial communities and activities across a gradient of oceanic depth zones (sublittoral, bathyal, abyssal, hadal) are impacted by the pressure of the surrounding water. The primary hypothesis being tested is that ?microbial communities in subseafloor sediment are adapted for in situ pressure.? The null hypothesis is that these ?communities are merely remnant populations introduced from shallower depths and poorly adapted for in situ pressure.? To test these hypotheses, the project compares the subseafloor communities and rates of activity that occur in anoxic subseafloor sediment at ocean depths ranging from 50 to ~8400 meters below sea level in the Puerto Rico Trench region. To collect the samples and shipboard data, the project includes a 26-day coring program. The project interrogates the genomic composition and community metabolic rates of the subseafloor sedimentary communities over this full range of ocean depths. Experiments are being conducted to determine the pressure-dependence of potential processes (sulfate reduction and methanogenesis) and genes that are preferentially expressed at in situ pressures by sublittoral, bathyal, abyssal and hadal subseafloor communities. These results are synthesized to identify the nature and extent of adaptations to in situ pressure in subseafloor communities.