Our Mission

Establishing and maintaining a long-term monitoring station that can strategically measure the air that has equilibrated with the ocean’s surface and remotely report on the structure of the oxygen-deficient zones.

Nitrous Oxide

Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas and agent of stratospheric ozone loss, three hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide and one of the most important ozone-depleting substances. It is naturally produced by microorganisms subsisting under low oxygen conditions, conditions that are likely to be exacerbated in a warmer world.

Eastern Tropical Pacific Oxygen Minimum Zones

The eastern tropical Pacific is a particularly important greenhouse gas source region as it hosts the two largest permanent oxygen minimum zones in the global ocean. The Galápagos islands are ideally and uniquely suited to a long-term monitoring site and expand the atmospheric monitoring network to investigate marine emissions.

Data obtained from Kwiecinski and Babbin, 2020, GBC.