Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
About a year ago the Seed Mothership, sponsored an event that allowed readers to pose questions to their favorite blogger. Peter and I, before we had the mothership connection, joined up with that event. You, the readers, presented several insightful questions.
So once again, I ask you to suggest some questions/topics. Just put them in the comments and Peter and I will do are best to answer them. You may want to keep the questions deep sea related or you will be forced to read our ramblings on matters we have no idea about!
Comments
OK, I'll start.
What's the current take on a deep sea origin of life?
I just finished reading Genesis by Robert Hazen where he discusses some of the hypothesis' pros and cons and how there is something of a divide between the "ventists" and the "Millerites" (or something like that) and was wondering if deep-sea scientists naturally fell into the "ventist" camp.
As an aside, I have been thinking that deep sea vents seem almost too extreme to be the cradle of life. If life did evolve there, how did it ever move away from there? Doesn't leaving the vent areas involve some major environmental changes (e.g. temperature, chemistry, pressure)? I would think that any organism that can survive there would be extremely specialized and therefore be SOL if it ventured too far. But then again, I'm not a deep-sea scientist.
Posted by: Jim Lemire | February 25, 2007 4:06 PM
Does an octopus have a medulla oblongata?
Will you perish as a mere desire-ridden terrestrial, or will you endure the rite of 365 points and sublimate yourself as a creature of the ocean?
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | February 26, 2007 8:21 AM
There have been several terrestrial mass extinction events. Did those same events cause similar results in the deep sea, or does the deep sea has its own such events. Ok, this is really more of a paleontology question....
Posted by: chris | February 26, 2007 2:06 PM
Is "tell me a bunch more about Nudibranchs" too general? And if it is, how about info on how deep deep is. What's the deepest point and have we touched down there yet? What's the deepest a human has gone. An unmanned submersible? And a compare those to scale with layers of the earth and the atmosphere.
Are deep seeps located in the deep sea? I don't know at what depths they're usually found, but if they are I have plenty more questions about them.
Posted by: ellie | February 27, 2007 1:54 PM
Thanks for all the great questions. Will start to address them next week.
Posted by: CR McClain | February 27, 2007 2:23 PM