The Marine Science Department has been bustling with The Joye Lab getting together their items for their upcoming research trip. Recently, Professor Joye sat down with Chris D'Angelo at The Huffington Post to talk a little more about her plans. As evidenced in previous articles, she has an expressed interest in the deep sea. This upcoming research is no different. A site off the coast of North Carolina, which was only discovered several years ago, contains a large colony of beggiatoa bacteria 500 metres below the surface. Samantha plans to use Alvin to collect samples from this colony and study something that no one else has ever been able to see. Along with her team and her partner in this expedition, Erik Cordes of Temple University, they hope to unravel the mystery of how the deep ocean works. When speaking of why this research is so essential and close to her heart, Professor Joye compared the deep ocean to our kidneys, stating, “You don’t think a lot about your kidneys. Nobody thinks a lot about the deep ocean,” she said. “Until they don’t work. And then you’re like, ‘Oh my god, what have we done." The original article can be found on The Huffington Post's website here.