Roland Hatzenpichler and his colleagues will board a submersible in November that will take them down 6,500 feet to the bottom of Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California to extract core samples of the hydrothermally active microbe-rich sediments found there. The scientists plan to use newly developed technology to research the samples to gain a better understanding of what microbes live in the sediments and what role they play in breaking down and converting carbon.