The offshore oil and gas industry is under greater scrutiny than ever before. Resource exploration and the associated technology required for economical extraction continues to be pushed to the limits due to the depths of water in which resources are found. Some of these images are taken from a series of environmental scanning microscopy images that were undertaken for my PhD. I discovered that the seabed sediment into which hot-oil pipelines are laid has in fact, been biologically modified through the production of robust faecal pellets by burrowing invertebrates (worms!). The images shows diatoms adjacent to disintegrating faecal pellets from a core sample taken from West African deep ocean sediments, water depth circ. 1440m. These pellets significantly influence the interface shearing behaviour of hot-oil pipelines, and provides an example of how an interdisciplinary approach to research can produce exciting and important discoveries with direct applications to the industry.

ESEM image showing microscopic sediment elements (<53 micrometers). Acknowledgements: Alan Heaver and Anne Bahnveg.