Microbial Oceanography

Microbial Oceanography Vienna (MOVIE)

The image shows the RV Pelagia from NIOZ (Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) in the foreground, with an iceberg in the background in the open North Atlantic.
Crew of R/V Pelagia

Welcome to the Microbial Oceanography Lab at the University of Vienna!

Marine microbes are central to life on Earth. Thanks to their unique metabolisms, they drive key steps in biogeochemical cycles that other organisms cannot perform.

Microbial oceanography studies how open-ocean Bacteria and Archaea function and how their communities shape biogeochemical fluxes. This work is inherently interdisciplinary, connecting microbial and molecular ecology with biogeochemistry and the physical transport of water masses.

Gerhard Herndl