Scientific seminar by Emmanuel Boss - A perspective on phytoplankton and their dynamics you will not likely see in your textbooks

In this talk I will argue that oceanographers, as observed in our textbooks and in papers, have many misconceptions with respect to phytoplankton. These span from a land centric view of ocean 'deserts' and 'blooms', to a euphotic depth quantified by 1% of surface light and the notion that phytoplankton play a crucial role in sequestering CO2 from today's atmosphere. Finally, if we think about ocean ecosystems from an evolutionary perspective, carbon sequestration can be viewed as an inefficiency the ecosystem likely fights against rather than a service. 

A principal thrust of my current research is the use of measured optical properties in-situ and inverted from Ocean Color satellite remote sensing to obtain the bulk properties of the matter in the ocean (e.g. particulate size distribution, composition). I have an enthusiasm for multi-disciplinary studies, from radiative transfer, marine optics & geophysical fluid dynamics, biological-physical interactions and phytoplankton ecology & diversity.