Basically SAHFOS has asked us to drag the toilet roll...ahem...plankton recorder behind us and report back. Governments use the information to address marine environmental management issues such as harmful algal blooms, pollution, climate change and fisheries. Not bad for a microscopic weakling. We guess travel really is good for the soul, or at least, for science. So far, SAHFOS has mainly gathered information from the North Atlantic, using cargo ships on certain routes to trail the CPR (they refer to it as a "towfish", since they're obviously a bit more tasteful than we are). So, we have offered to get them information as we head across the Pacific.

Even NASA is interested in what plankton has to say. NASA also has a nifty plankton-measuring device, but theirs is called SeaWiFs (the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor). It probably doesn't look like a toilet roll. Oh, and it's in space of course. Anyway, for nearly ten years, SeaWiFs has been making global observations of phytoplankton productivity. On December 6, NASA-funded scientists announced that warming sea surface temperatures over the past decade have caused a global decline in phytoplankton productivity. This has consquences: while the humble plankton isn't necessarily going to save us from global warming, it could certainly help. One of the NASA guys said: "This study shows that as the climate warms, phytoplankton growth rates go down and along with them the amount of carbon dioxide these ocean plants consume. That allows carbon dioxide to accumulate more rapidly in the atmosphere, which would produce more warming.” You can check out the stunning pics and get more hefty scientific quotes here.

On Thursday Helena will bring you an update (and hopefully some happy snaps) as the "towfish" is hauled in. To find out more about this mysterious hitchhiker of the seas, you can also read back a few months in this very blog: one of our predecessor webbies, Richella, also succumbed to the charms of The Wanderer.