One of the main questions is why there
are so many species of plankton and what roles do they play
My name is Andrew Barton. I'm a marine ecologist
I'm interested in the smallest organisms in the ocean that have massive importance
for marine fisheries and also global
scale processes
In my research I use a combination of observations and models. In fact there's a really strong two-way
interaction between these perspectives
so observations can be going to sea
collecting plankton looking at them
under a microscope
it can also be doing careful studies in
the laboratory setting and models are
numerical simulations where you try to
understand in many cases what you've
seen from your observations
One unique aspect of my job is that I'm a joint
appointment with the biological sciences
and Scripps Institution of Oceanography
I have the ability to draw upon
expertise across all these different
disciplines and work with people who are
world leading experts in these different areas
I think for land plants and land
animals we have a fairly good intuition
about where they live and why. It's far
far more difficult in the ocean because
it's difficult to go to sea, the
microorganisms are hard to collect and count
So what I do is I want to build
that appreciation for the biogeography
of organisms. Not just you collected a
sample in one spot but if you could
collect the sample at many many spots in
many different times a year then we
would have this sort of big picture
about where organisms live and why
