Cruise TAN1810 - Chatham Rise New Zealand - water and sediment traps - bacteria 16S metabarcodes

This NIWA voyage TAN1810 - led by Dr. Moira Decima and NIWA scientists in partnership with multiple international collaborators - starting on 23 October 2018, focused on the special role salps play in carbon cycling, and where they fit in marine food webs off the New Zealand coast. Salps are jelly-like marine animals, shaped like barrel, that combine swimming with moving by pumping water through a feeding filter. They play a unique ecological and biogeochemical role as extensive grazers of some of the smallest marine phytoplankton. Bacterial community composition samples were collected from a minimum of six depths, a minimum of three times per cycle. Sample collection consisted of filtering 0.5 - 1.5 L of seawater through a 0.2um 47mm Millipore filter. The filter was flash frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80 C until processing. DNA was extracted separately from each filter using a PowerSoil DNA Isolation Kit. 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing was carried out using the Earth Microbiome Project barcoded primer set and conditions (Caporaso, J. G., Paszkiewicz, K., Field, D., Knight, R. and Gilbert, J. A. The Western English Channel contains a persistent microbial seed bank. Isme Journal 6, 1089-1093, 2012)