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Women describe life at sea.
Contact Us Melanie looks for thermophiles in culture tubes aboard the NOAA research ship McArthur. Whenever Melanie Summit peers through a microscope at a culture she has prepared, there is a good chance that she will see something that nobody has ever seen before. They form the base of a complex ecosystem that supports such amazing creatures as giant tube worms, white crabs, and octopii. Scientists such as Melanie have only just begun to probe these vents for microscopic life and have discovered just a fraction of what's down there. So each new culture Melanie prepares could contain microbes new to science.