I have spent the last 30 years studying the ocean using a variety of instruments, ranging from early flip thermometers, to modern CTD's, from my first own designs of autonomous sampling platforms to study marine snow particles in a lagrangian environment, called the Neutrally Buoyant Sediment Trap (NBST), to a modern highly advanced deep Explorer class autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), from single cylinder sediment and PIT style surface moored trap arrays, to moorings hundreds of meter long with time series sediment traps deployed for a year in almost all of the world oceans.
My interests are the fate of the material entering the ocean and how this material is altered on its way through the water column to the deep sea floor. Once arrived on the seafloor in most cases the material is not immediately stationary and can be resuspended into nepheloid layers and potentially be moved laterally within these nepheloid layers along the seafloor.
This process effects the residence time of the material in the water column allowing it to be exposed to bacterial decomposition, physical aggregation and disaggregation processes, and grazing, all of which change these marine snow aggregates before the final burial of this material in the sediments of the deep sea floor.
Diercks A.-R., Romero I.C., Larson R.A., Schwing P., Harris A., Bosman S., Chanton J.P., Brooks G. 2021. Resuspension, Redistribution, and Deposition of Oil-Residues to Offshore Depocenters After the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Front Mar Sci 8. Frontiers. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2021.630183
Romero IC, Chanton J, Brooks GR, Bosman S, Larson RA, Harris A, Schwing P, Diercks, A.-R. 2021. Molecular markers of biogenic and oil-derived hydrocarbons in deep-sea sediments following the Deepwater Horizon spill. Front Mar Sci 8. Frontiers. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2021.637970
Johansen, C., Macelloni, L., Natter, M., Silva, M., Woosley, M., Woolsey, A., Diercks, A.R., Hill, J., Viso, R., Marty, E., Lobodin, V.V., Shedd, W., Joye, S.B., MacDonald, I.R., 2020. Hydrocarbon migration pathway and methane budget for a Gulf of Mexico natural seep site: Green Canyon 600. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 545, 116411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116411
Diercks, A.-R., K. Ziervogel, R. Sibert, S. Joye, V. Asper, J.P. Montoya. Vertical marine snow distribution in the stratified, hypersaline, and anoxic Orca Basin (Gulf of Mexico). 2019 Elem Sci Anth, 7(1), p.10. http://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.348.
Diercks, A.-R., L. Macelloni, M. D’Emidio, S. Locker, A. Woolsey, M. Woolsey. High-Resolution seismo-acoustic characterization of Green Canyon 600, a perennial Hydrocarbon Seep in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico. Mar. Geophys. Res. 2018. http://doi-org.lynx.lib.usm.edu/10.1007/s11001-018-9374-3.
Chanton, J.P., S.L.C. Giering, S.H. Bosman, K. L. Rogers, J. Sweet, V.L. Asper, A.-R. Diercks and U. Passow. Isotopic composition of sinking particles: Oil effects, recovery and baselines in the Gulf of Mexico, 2010–2015. Elem Sci Anth, 2018; 6:43. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.298
Diercks, A.-R., C. Dike, V.L. Asper, S.F. DiMarco, J.P. Chanton, U. Passow. Scales of seafloor sediment resuspension in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Elem Sci Anth. 2018; 6(1):32. http://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.285