What is your role in Extreme 2002?

I am the principal investigator on the Extreme 2002 expedition and also have the rewarding position as Chief Scientist. This is my 23rd cruise with the Alvin and my fourth as Chief Scientist. Being Chief Scientist means I am responsible for the success of the science being conducted on the expedition. My primary role is to interface between the ship and submersible operations and the science to ensure that everything moves smoothly and successfully.

We are very fortunate in this country to have the most professional and successful submersible operation in the world. This success is based on the professional attitude and enthusiasm of the crew of the Atlantis (mother ship) and the Alvin group. Ultimately, our success hinges on their abilities to get the sub in and out of the water every day and to carry out our desired tasks.

What questions are you working to answer and why?

Our chief objective will be to learn more about the Pompeii worm (Alvinella pompejana) and its incredible heat tolerance by studying the worm’s unique biology and the bacterial colony that live right on its back. This worm is the most heat-tolerant of higher-order life forms — it’s able to withstand an environment as hot as 80°C (176°F). Finding out how it survives the nearly boiling water emanating from the vents is a mystery we would like to solve.

What’s your educational background and what lured you into marine research?

I was born in the United States, spending most of my early years in Southern California. Living in Los Angeles, my family and I would spend much of the summer on the beach. Little did I know that these early exposures to the marine environment would have such a long-lasting impact on my life. We moved to England when I was 10, where I was immediately thrust into the very strict and more demanding British educational system. It was here that I clearly remember becoming passionate about marine biology. A young Australian visiting teacher taught my first biology class, working in marine biology wherever possible. I was hooked!

This experience led to a summer job at London’s National Aquarium. I decided this was what I wanted to study in University, and so in my senior year, I applied to colleges in the United States that had undergraduate programs in marine sciences. I spent four years at the Florida Institute of Technology majoring in marine biology. With that introduction behind me, I was fortunate to receive the Our World Underwater Scholarship. This year-long scholarship is awarded to an individual wishing to gain more experience in any marine-related field. I spent an entire year traveling around the world working with marine scientists from all disciplines. At the close of that year, I decided to return to school and earned a master’s degree at San Diego State University developing new approaches for culturing marine bivalves. After completing my master’s degree, I decided to spend a year working as a marine naturalist in Indonesia. Here, I was fortunate to explore dozens of rarely visited islands and many reefs that had never seen a SCUBA diver. I returned to the states, and in the fall of 1983 began my doctoral work at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. This was a dream come true. I was fortunate to arrive at Scripps shortly after the discovery of hydrothermal vents and to be taken into a laboratory that was heavily involved in vent research. Six years and over 15 cruises later, I emerged from Scripps with a Ph.D. and an intense love of science.

I was fortunate to receive an NSF Marine Biotechnology Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue my training in molecular biology in the laboratory of Dr. Stephen Giovannoni at Oregon State University. The application of molecular biology to examine questions in marine ecology was brand new and certainly one of the exciting frontiers in marine science. I spent four years in Oregon researching aspects of vent symbiosis and microbiology.

In 1994, I accepted a position in the College of Marine Studies at the University of Delaware, where my lab continues to research aspects of vent symbioses and free-living microbial life in this very extreme environment. My lab has recently ventured into another extreme environment to styd soil microbial communities in one of the driest/coldest places on Earth — the Drys Valley of the Antarctic.