Dr. Yinzhao Wang and Yunru Chen from Professor Fengping Wang‘s group participated in the R/V SONNE cruise SO269 from August 2nd to September 3rd this summer. The chief scientist of the cruise is Prof. Joanna Waniek from IOW, Germany. The working area covers deep South China Sea over the continental slope to the shelf in the vicinity of the Pearl River estuary. This cruise is a part of the Sino-German joint project MEGAPOL (short for “Megacity’s fingerprint in Chinese marginal seas: Investigation of pollutant fingerprints and dispersal”). The interdisciplinary expedition team on board the R/V SONNE includes 26 scientists from German universities and institutes and 12 Chinese scientists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey. During this cruise, Dr. Wang and Yunru collected samples from 7 gravity cores and 21 multi-cores. The samples have been transported back to home lab and will be used in microbial studies.