The Black Sea as Natural Laboratory for Biogeochemistry and Microbiology of Anoxic Habitats

The Black Sea is the largest anoxic basin on earth and provides unique conditions for the study of microbial habitats and controls on key anaerobic microbial processes in the element cycles. Recent studies of European research programs carried out in situ measurements of fluxes and turnover of methane and sulfur at seep systems of the Black Sea, and investigated the microbial diversity in permanently anoxic settings, especially those associated with fluid flow and gas seepage. This presentation will summarize recent work on shallow and deep continental margin settings northwest of Crimea and in the Sorokin Trough and present first results of the expedition MICROHAB with RV METEOR (HERMES project).