During this course, University of Oregon will offer a course in deep-sea biology to graduate students and qualified undergraduates. In the past, this course has been offered in the Bahamas, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Iceland. The course is taught at sea, with students participating in every aspect of a research cruise and making dives to the ocean floor. Each student writes his dive experiences in a blog for this web site and participates in various group research projects. The lecture portion of the class takes place either out on the deck at night (students sit in lawn chairs and professors project Powerpoint against the white bulkhead of the ship) or in the lab during daytime submersible dives. This year’s deep-sea course includes the following lectures:

May 12: Hide and Seek in the Deep and Dark (Dr. Tammy Frank, HBOI)

May 13: Deep-sea Biology in the Heroic Age (Young)

Deep-sea Biology in the Age of Technology (Young)

May 14: Physical properties and water masses of the world oceans (Tyler)

May 15: Seasonality and periodicity in the deep sea (Tyler)

May 16: Larval development, dispersal and ontogenetic migration (Young)

May 17: Piezophysiology (Jaeckle)

May 18: Energy availability in chemosynthetic environments (Tyler)

May 19: Ecology of chemosynthetic systems (Tyler)

Whale falls, wood falls and oxygen minima (Tyler)

May 20: Filter feeding and deposit feeding in the deep-sea benthos (Young)

Ecology of seamounts and deep-sea corals (Brooke)

May 21: Species diversity and biomass (Tyler)

May 22: Zonation and the origin of deep-sea faunas (Young)

May 23: Anthropogenic Impacts (Tyler)