Subsurface exploration relies on drilling. Normally drilling requires a drilling fluid that will infiltrate into the drill core. Drilling fluid contains non-indigenous materials and microbes from the surface, so its presence renders a sample unsuitable for microbiological and many other analyses. Because infiltration cannot be avoided, it is of paramount importance to assess the degree of contamination to identify uncontaminated samples for geomicrobiological investigations. To do this, usually a tracer is mixed into the drilling fluid. In past drilling operations a variety of tracers have been used, each has specific strengths and weaknesses. For microspheres the main problem was the high price, which limited their use to spot checks or drilling operations that require only small amounts of drilling fluid. Here, we present a modified microsphere tracer approach that uses an aqueous fluorescent pigment dispersion with a similar concentration of fluorescent particles as previously used microsphere tracers. However, it costs four orders of magnitude less, allowing for a more liberal use even in large operations.

abundance, and some non-laminated horizons show large variability on the millimetre scale as well. The reasons for such contrasting observations remain elusive, but indicate that heterogeneity of microbial abundance in subsurface sediments has not been taken into account sufficiently. These findings have implications not just for microbiological studies but for geochemistry as well, as the large differences in microbial abundance clearly show that there are distinct microhabitats that deviate considerably from the surrounding layers.