Episode 2: Woods Hole

The deep sea is one of our last frontiers. For most of human history, it was a vast, dark, and unknown realm that invoked awe and terror. Now, one thing we do know is that it is critically important and central to the future of life on this planet.

In The Dark Frontier, marine microbiologist and deep-sea explorer Jeffrey Marlow reveals how life can thrive in even the most remote, unforgiving landscapes. Professor Marlow’s research focuses on understanding the microbes that inhabit the rocks and sediments of the seafloor.

In his lab in Boston, he works with a team of scientists to discover how these communities of microbes perform feats of metabolic ingenuity that shape the global carbon cycle and push the boundaries of life’s limits in extreme environments.

In this second episode, he looks back to his summer as an undergraduate at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, and his first attempts to extract the DNA of microbes living in deep-ocean rocks. The discovery of these microbes has profoundly altered the old assumption that life was dependent on the sun. In fact, hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean are a second source of life: “I was coming to understand that the microbial universe was just as mysterious as the worlds beyond Earth I had longed to explore as a boy.”

Reader: Adam Sims
Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Burke
Executive producer: Sara Davies
Sound design: Jon Calver
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4