With beautifully diverse and intricate shells, these single celled organisms are used as both a marker of oil deposits and as fossilized messengers of Earth’s climate history through which scientists study past climates to tell our future ones.  In fact, most specimens and the little research we have are from petroleum industry scientists. 

These creatures live on the surface of the open ocean, capturing carbon from the atmosphere before sinking to the seafloor and becoming a layer of sediment, sequestering the carbon in deep time.

The ocean absorbs more carbon than the soil and the trees combined, yet we know little of its mechanisms for doing so. These tiny creatures likely play an outside role in the carbon biosequestration cycle. 

Could we biologically modify them to sequester more? This project explores  new species of radiolarian and foraminifera, grown in nursery labs in the open sea.