The past few weeks were very busy preparing the plankton samples for the taxonomic microscope analysis and doing the first observations and counts. More than 100 slides were mounted at the Laboratory of Calcareous Nannofossils (Nanolab) at the Instituto Dom Luiz of the University of Lisbon, for the identification and quantification of the coccolithophore species thriving all along the the photic layer of the tropical North Atlantic. The next several looooooong weeks will be spent at the microscope, dwelling between the surface of the ocean and the bottom of the photic layer, between the Caribbean and the NW Africa..... Looking forward to have some pictures of nice coccospheres to show you in the next blog post!
