#AntarcticLog is a series of comics by Karen Romano Young. You can find the originals here.

Greetings once again from sea, this time the Caribbean Sea, off the Cayman Islands to be precise, way down deep at the Mid-Cayman Rise.  Today is Alvin dive 5101, on the Beebe Vent Field (named for the deep-sea pioneer William Beebe who, with Otis Barton, descended 417m in the bathysphere in 1930, the year Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was founded), the deepest known hydrothermal vents in the world. Wonder what we’ll find… 

On board is a so-called early career scientist with a passion for deep-sea microbes and a profound hope that they could present a solution to the problem of plastics in the sea. Here’s Erin Garza of the J. Craig Venter Institute — along with baseball card comics of some of our other sea stars. 

[include Erin Garza, large comic, and the other baseball card comics attached.] 

–Karen Romano Young is a writer, artist, deep-sea diver, and polar explorer. Follow her on Twitter & Instagram.