I participated in three cruises in the Ross Sea, Antarctica working with David Caron (University of Southern California, formerly at WHOI) and Rebecca Gast (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution).  In December/January 1998/1999, I helped isolate protists and bring them into culture to establish a culture collection of protists from an extreme environment.  This collection of protists, with additions of species from other cruises, has been maintained at USC and WHOI, and a subset was recently established at Temple University. In October/November 2003, the N.B. Palmer lost 2 of its 4 engines and we were forced to turn back before reaching our objective -  the polynya (ice-free region in an otherwise ice-covered ocean) that develops in the southern Ross Sea in October and November each year. We were able to run a side experiment examining the sensitivity of Paraphysomonas to UV radiation.  For a web page related to the second cruise try this link.  In 2005, we were once again aboard the Palmer for a cruise to the polynya.  At that time I teamed with Steffi Moorthi to survey several stations for the presence of mixotrophic flagellates in the Ross Sea.  We found mixotrophic protists, which have chloroplasts (are photosynthetic) and ingest bacteria in varying proportions at every station.  These included communities in open water, water under ice, and in cores from pack ice (Moorthi, et al. 2009).