Meet Giuseppe Cortese
Meet Giuseppe Cortese
What is your job title?
Senior Scientist, Quaternary Paleoclimate.
What do you study and why is it important?
I am a micropaleontologist, and my speciality is siliceous microscopic fossils called radiolarians. They are pretty useful in a variety of applications in the Earth Sciences, as you can use them to reconstruct past temperatures and current systems in the ocean, other seawater properties, date rocks…
What will you be doing on the voyage?
I will be involved in the surface sediment sampling program. Basically I am looking at collecting as much as possible surface sediment samples from the bottom of the ocean in the Southwest Pacific, from the Equator down to Antarctica. Once I will have enough localities covered, I will count the relative abundances of radiolarian species in these sediments, and link the changes in species abundances to the temperature in the surface ocean to where they live. This relationship will then be used in sediment cores going back in time, and allow me to reconstruct past climatic conditions at different localities around New Zealand.
I guess a shorter answer would have been: “Build a paleothermometer”
Where were you educated?Italy and Norway: Florence University (Geology M.Sc.), Florence and Oslo Universities (Paleontology Ph.D.).
I have been working in Germany, at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, for quite some time after that, and am now with GNS Science.
How did you become interested in the ocean?
I was born by it, mucked around a lot in it, it’s pretty enjoyable, there is a lot of it, it’s fascinating and it’s important for climate and many of our resources….
Maybe the right question would have been: How comes you missed it?
Do you get seasick? And if so, any tips on how not to?
Slightly, just at the beginning of the cruises on small vessels and rough seas.
I guess take some medicine against it… but I prefer to let my body adapt to the new situation.
What do you enjoy about your work?
Its variety and flexibility, the creativity it requires, the travelling it involves, the international community associated with it.
What are some of the challenges you face?
In my line of job, the routine is to get samples, produce data, look at them from creative angles, build a nice story, write it down and get it published.
The most daring, but at the same time the most fascinating, challenge is that these procedures are not routine at all, they change massively from project to project, and so you are always confronted with the need to “always invent something new”.
What have you learned/discovered? What do you hope to learn?
I learned a lot in the past few years about how the ocean, particularly its currents and biology, have an impact on climate. I became more and more interested in climatic mechanisms and contributed with a few “bricks” of knowledge that contribute towards solving the intricacies of how climate change works in different areas of the ocean.
I hope to be able to learn a lot about New Zealand and the ocean around it !
How do you spend your spare time?
Walking around regional and national parks, windsurfing, riding a motorbike, playing keyboards, cooking, and plain relaxing too.
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