Prof. Dr. Craig Smith. I am a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii and one of the leaders of the Antarctic project (called FOODBANCS 2). I am studying how the communities of marine animals and bacteria in the Antarctic are responding to climate warming. Our study area along the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere in the world, and the amazing ecosystems there are changing very quickly. I also work in tropical intertidal habitats (for example, mangroves in Hawaii) and on seafloor communities in the very deep ocean (deeper than 4000 m or 2.5 miles) in other parts of the world. The differences between Hawaiian and Antarctic ecosystems are especially interesting because Hawaiian waters have "summer" conditions year round, whereas the Antarctic has the harshest winters on the earth. Those of us living in Hawaii love to suit in the heavy Antarctic gear and venture out into the Antarctic cold -- it our only chance to see some snow and ice!
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/csmith/

Dr. Laura Grange. Dr. Laura Grange. I have only very recently joined Craig Smith’s lab at the University of Hawaii as a postdoctoral scholar working on the FOODBANCS project. I am primarily interested in the way in which seafloor communities respond to the variable and highly seasonal food supply typical on the Antarctic shelf, specifically in terms of their feeding dynamics and reproductive responses. I have previously studied inter-annual and seasonal variation in the reproductive cycles of three Antarctic echinoderms and a nemertean worm abundant on the Western Antarctic Peninsula, and associated these cycles with the seasonal food supply characteristic of the Antarctic. During the forthcoming cruise I will also be looking at how these responses are affected by climate change and will be undertaking many animal dissections, collecting gonad tissues for weight measurements and gut tissues to describe differences in gut morphology and seafloor feeding dynamics. In addition we will also be studying these tissues to determine their composition and energy content, and the likely food sources available.

Dr. Rhian Waller. I'm a new faculty member at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii and arrived there just five weeks ago coming from my postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. My research focuses on looking at the ecology of cold-water corals in extreme environments - like the Antarctic - and how they are affected by stress such as climate changes and anthropogenic impacts. My projects on this cruise involve collecting coral samples from trawls and looking at their DNA to examine the population structure down the peninsula (and comparing them to corals living on seamounts in the Drake Passage and on the Chilean and Argentinian shelf from another project), looking at how these corals reproduce using histology and TEM analysis, and also collecting brooded larvae to look at larval behavior and skeleton formation. I'll also be taking water samples to look at the aragonite saturation of the water they live in to try and find out how these corals are making their skeletons in such cold water, and how that would be affected by ocean warming. http://www.whoi.edu/hpb/Site.do?id=306

M.S Fabio De Leo. I am a PhD student at University of Hawaii working with Deep-Sea invertebrate communities. These animals (from very tiny polychaete worms up to bigger shrimps, seastars, corals, etc) live in the seafloor and represent important food resources for many fish species commercially exploited around the world. Also, they represent one of the largest reservoirs of the marine biodiversity (~70% of all marine species live in the bottom of the ocean). Therefore, it is really important to study and preserve the ecosystem where they live. In this current FOODBANC's cruise here in Antarctica I am helping prof. Craig Smith and other scientists to study how this ‘climate change’ that we hear all the time in the news will affect marine ecosystems. We know that global warming is already affecting how the oceans function and also that many marine species are severely endangered. However, we still need to investigate how the ocean warming and the melting of sea ice in the Antarctic for example will affect the bottom of the ocean and the animals that live there. You will find more about my research and interests at my personal page at SOEST website Come aboard with us…

Pavica Srsen. I am a graduate student in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii. Within the FOODBANCS project I am primarily interested on how biodiversity changes across a latitudinal gradient in the Western Antarctic Peninsula. I will be looking at macrofaunal and megafaunal community structure and composition and relating it to the main environmental conditions. I hope to see some biodiversity patterns coupled with sea ice duration which could help us to predict the changes in the seafloor communities as a result of global warming.
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/csmith/pavica.html

M.S. Angelo Bernardino. Hello everyone, I am a graduate student from Brazil but currently I am working at University of Hawaii with Dr. Craig Smith. My research focuses on ecology of communities that live at whale carcasses that sink to the bottom of the ocean after they die. To study them, we sink the carcasses to the bottom and them visit the study site at several times to see what animals are living there. I am also comparing the animals colonizing these whale falls with other deep-sea (below 1500 meters depth) communities, to see if any organisms utilize these whales as "islands" to disperse across large ocean basins such as the Pacific Ocean. In this cruise, I will be mainly involved in the analysis of microbial communities in the sediment, to see how microbial organisms respond to the latitudinal gradient on food input and ice duration. If you would like to ask anything about my work or this cruise, I will be happy to answer you! Aloha, Angelo. http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/csmith/angelo.html

Dr. Victor Evrard. I've recently embarked on a postdoc with Craig Smith at the University of Hawaii and I'm involved in two projects. I'm currently carrying on with an ongoing project looking at the biogeochemical and ecological impacts of invasive mangroves and their removal, here in Hawaii. From February on, I will be involved in Foodbancs 2, looking at the bentho-pelagic coupling along the Antarctic Peninsula. This is a drastic change of horizon for me, as most of my research has focused on coastal processes, looking at carbon and nitrogen transfer in shallow subtidal sandy sediments. I investigated the fate of marine benthic primary producers along the main heterotrophic compartments (bacteria, meiofauna and macrofauna), using naturally occurring 13C and 15N stable isotopes as well as in enrichment experiments. On this cruise, I will be collecting and analyzing various samples from the water column and the sediment to get a better grasp of the effects of climate change on bentho-pelagic coupling. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~vevrard/

Christian Clark. I am senior student at the Enviromental Science program of SOEST. My main interests fall in between Zoology and Oceanography with a really strong interest in climate change and its results on ecosystems. As far as my science interests I would say I am interested in Wildlife conservation and I am thinking about moving into documentary film after I finish my undergrad. During the FOODBANCS cruise I will be helping Prof. Smith and his colleagues in deploying some oceanographic equipments and also in collecting deep-sea sediments for studing invertebrate communities.