A new article highlights the really cool work that has come from Ken Smith and Henry Ruhl. Ken’s lab has monitoring a deep-sea abyssal site called Station M for the last 20+ years located of the southern California coast. Their work has lead to many major findings. One of the most important is that deep-sea patterns and processes are intrinsically linked to surface production over short ecological timescales. Thus El Nino/La Nina cycles and other such meterological/oceanic events leave a deep-sea signature. You can find a nice list of the labs publications here.
You can read more about this research and the other things Henry is involved with in the following posts
Climate Induced Collapse of Deep-Sea Systems
25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea: The Deep Sea is Not Stable
25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea: Patterns and Processes in the Deep Sea Are Linked to Surface Production
Science and Industry Colloboration in Deep-Sea Research
Craig McClain is the Executive Director of the Lousiana University Marine Consortium. He has conducted deep-sea research for 20 years and published over 50 papers in the area. He has participated in and led dozens of oceanographic expeditions taken him to the Antarctic and the most remote regions of the Pacific and Atlantic. Craig’s research focuses on how energy drives the biology of marine invertebrates from individuals to ecosystems, specifically, seeking to uncover how organisms are adapted to different levels of carbon availability, i.e. food, and how this determines the kinds and number of species in different parts of the oceans. Additionally, Craig is obsessed with the size of things. Sometimes this translated into actually scientific research. Craig’s research has been featured on National Public Radio, Discovery Channel, Fox News, National Geographic and ABC News. In addition to his scientific research, Craig also advocates the need for scientists to connect with the public and is the founder and chief editor of the acclaimed Deep-Sea News (http://deepseanews.com/), a popular ocean-themed blog that has won numerous awards. His writing has been featured in Cosmos, Science Illustrated, American Scientist, Wired, Mental Floss, and the Open Lab: The Best Science Writing on the Web.
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