The Hidden Ocean, Arctic 2005 Explorers
Jack Adams has been teaching math and science in Alaska for the past 25 years. Most of that time was spent on the Seward Penisula in the small Inupiat community of White Mountain. He is particularly fond of adventures with a science slant. His hobbies include cross country skiing and running.
Richard
Arena
Environmental Science Major
Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
Richard Arena is currently working on an environmental science degree with a chemistry concentration. He plans on pursuing a graduate degree in physical oceanography upon completion. Richard will be deploying underwater camera systems both under the ice and on a benthic platform as a non-destructive means of studying marine benthic populations. It is his objective to study the chemical and physical interactions that effect population ecology. This is the second cruise that Richard has been on and he is anticipating quite an adventure.
Bodil
Bluhm
Research Assistant Professor
School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
University of Alaska
Bodil Bluhm is a marine ecologist with a research focus on marine invertebrates from high latitudes. She earned her PhD from the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Bremerhaven/University of Bremen, Germany, before she moved to Alaska in 2001. Her graduate research has focused on growth and age of seafloor inhabiting invertebrates in the Arctic and Antarctic. In the last few years, she has worked on coupling processes between sea floor, water column, and sea ice, as well as on food webs and biodiversity-related questions. So far, Dr. Bluhm has participated in about a dozen Arctic and Antarctic expeditions in the last decade. During this expedition, she will be part of the benthic team investigating the sea-floor communities of the Arctic deep-sea using imaging and collecting tools. Also, she will help process the sea ice samples to be collected on this cruise. When not at sea or in the office, she enjoys exploring Alaska's natural wonders.
Elisabeth
Calvert
Graduate Student
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Elizabeth Calvert was born in Hanover, NH and attended high school in Pittsburgh, PA. She received her B.S. in Marine and Freshwater Biology from the University of New Hampshire in 2000 and spent two summers working at the Shoals Marine Lab in the Gulf of Maine. She will graduate with her M.S. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in August 2005. Her thesis research focused on kelp ecosystems, both canopy and sub-canopy types, as habitat for fish and invertebrates in southeastern Alaska. Her research involved a large component of scuba diving and she is a member of the UA diving control board. During the Ocean Exploration cruise, Elizabeth will assist in the collection of ice-associated algae and organisms. Elizabeth is very excited to be a member of the science team and feels that diving under the ice is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When she is not doing research, Elizabeth coaches local figure skaters and is a volunteer EMT with the Capital City Fire and Rescue in Juneau. She also enjoys running, hiking, and kayaking.
Kelley
Elliott
Web Coordinator
NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration
Kelley Elliott recently graduated from George Mason University with a bachelor's degree in Integrative Studies, concentrating in Conservation Studies. She took her first breath underwater in the summer of 2003 and immediately fell in love with the ocean world, altering her coursework to include coral reef ecology and underwater archaeology. Kelley has been interning with NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration for a year and her future plans include pursuing a graduate degree in Coastal Resource Management. She is excited to be taking part on her first NOAA cruise as the website coordinator, bringing the excitement of the expedition to the public home.
Sergey
Gagaev
Senior scientist
Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences
St. Petersburg, Russia
Sergey Gagaev received a PhD in hydrobiology from Saint-Petersburg Zoological Institute. He has worked in the Arctic for more than 20 years during which he participated in about 20 research cruises all across the Arctic. His background is in taxonomy, zoogeography, ecology and etology of polychaeta (sea floor bristle worms), biocoenoses in the Arctic and arctic marine aquaria. Dr. Gagaev has collaborated with marine researchers from Norway, Germany and the US and is well traveled. During this Arctic cruise, Dr. Gagaev will be part of benthos team as a taxonomic expert.
Rolf
Gradinger
Assistant Professor
University of Alaska's School of Fisheries & Ocean Sciences
Dr. Rolf Gradinger has been working on the marine biology of ice covered waters since 1984. Since then, he has participated in 17 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica, mostly working on the food web dynamics of ice associated communities. Dr. Gradinger completed his PhD thesis in 1990 at Kiel University (Germany), where he was also head of the sea ice working group at the Institute for Polar Ecology until 2000. Since January 2001, Dr. Gradinger has been an assistant professor at the Institute of Marine Science in Fairbanks, studying the sea ice biota in coastal and shelf areas of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Over the last four years, he worked from Canadian and U.S. ice breakers and also in the coastal Alaskan communities of Barrow and Little Diomede. He enjoys Alaska, with its unique nature and the easy access to fascinating marine environments. His contribution to Arctic Exploration will focus on life at the interfaces of the pack ice floes in the Arctic Ocean. They will search for marine animals living related to sea ice on its surface, in its interior and on the bottom of the floes. For that purpose, they will collect material with ice corers. Divers will support them by providing video observations and animal collections from these regions.
Shawn
Harper
Graduate Student
School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Shawn Harper is currently pursuing a MS in marine biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He has worked on multiple research projects involving pinnipeds (Northern fur seals, Steller sea lions, and harbor seals) in Alaska and the Antarctic (Weddell seals). His current research interests involve assessing physiological conditions in mammals (specifically phocids) and furthering the development of techniques (e.g. blood biochemistry analyses) to monitor health issues in wild populations. He is also an experienced scientific diver conducting algal, invertebrate, and fish surveys throughout Alaska as well as the Antarctic. On this expedition, he will function as a scientific diver collecting sub-ice biological samples and surveys for multiple researches onboard the Healy. Shawn's ultimate goal is to be become a career polar marine biologist.
Brenda Holladay
Research Associate
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Brenda Holladay will be aboard the cruise as part of the benthos team. Mrs. Holladay received a M.Sc. of Fisheries Oceanography from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and has studied distribution and abundance of Alaskan fishes and invertebrates for 16 years. Using a small bottom trawl, Mrs. Holladay will capture fishes and invertebrates from the sea floor. She also hopes to collect larval fishes and near-surface fishes to expand knowledge of Arctic ichthyoplankton and to develop a baseline of trace metal otolith chemistry from the Canadian Basin.
Russ Hopcroft
Associate Professor
Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Dr. Russ Hopcroft is an Associate Professor at the University of Alaska's Institute of Marine Science in Fairbanks. He grew up fascinated by aquatic life (and Jacques Cousteau specials), pursuing the sciences during his education. Dr. Hopcroft received his Masters degree in 1988, and his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The focus of his graduate research was on marine plankton ecology in the tropical waters surrounding Jamaica, West Indies. From 1997 to 1999, Dr, Hopcroft was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). At MBARI he was heavily involved in the use of ROVs, as well as traditional oceanographic surveys, to study the oceans.
Dr. Hopcroft pursues a broad array of research interests, concentrating on the "lower" planktonic trophic levels that ultimately shape the structure of all aquatic communities. His research focuses on the composition, production and energy flow of pelagic ecosystems, and better methods to explore these topics. Although much of his research focuses on copepod and euphausiid crustaceans, he also specializes on the taxonomy, biology and ecology of the larvacean pelagic tunicates. He serves on the steering committee of several Census of Marine Life projects, most notably the Arctic Ocean Biodiversity (ArcOD) project.
Katrin Iken
Assistant Professor Marine Biology
School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Katrin Iken was born and raised in Germany and came to the US six years ago. She holds a position as Assistant Professor in Marine Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Dr. Iken enjoys Alaska with its abundant nature and wildlife. She has always been fascinated with the polar regions. After spending much of her previous career working in the Antarctic, she now enjoys working in the Arctic regions. So far, she has participated in about 12 research cruises to the Antarctic, the Arctic and the Deep-Sea. Her background is in benthic ecology, especially trophic interactions and food web studies. Dr. Iken will be part of the benthic and the sea ice team on board the Healy. She also will be the leader of the scientific dive team of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Back in the home lab she will be in charge for the analysis of stable isotopes.
Seung-Sep Kim
Graduate Student
University of Hawaii
Seung-Sep Kim is a graduate student majoring in Marine Geophysics at the University of Hawaii. A project for his MS proposes a new filtering method to isolate short-length-scale features (e.g., seamounts) from bathymetric data. His PhD project will focus on flexural properties of the Nazca plate along the Easter-Salas and Gomez Seamount Chain, located off the west coast of Chile. Before coming to Hawaii, he received a BS in Environmental Earth Sciences from Korea University and worked as a research assistant at the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute.
Ksenia Kosobokova
Marine Ecologist
Shirshov Institute of Oceanology
Ksenia Kosobokova graduated from Moscow State University in 1975, with a degree in biology; and she earned a PhD from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow in 1981. She has worked at the Shirshov Institute since 1976. Her primary interests are the ecology and distribution of zooplankton in the polar regions, the Arctic seas, and the Arctic Ocean, in particular. Her publications on biodiversity, seasonal population dynamics, life cycles of cold-water zooplankton, copepod reproductive biology, and egg production are widely recognized among specialists in the biology of cold-water regions. Dr. Kosobokova has participated in numerous Russian and international marine expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. She has been a member of the World Association of Copepodologists since 1993.
Ian MacDonald
Professor of Environmental Science
Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
Ian MacDonald will be part of the benthos team during the cruise. He received a PhD in biological oceanography from Texas A&M University in 1990. His expertise is in deep-sea ecology, submarine gas hydrates, image processing, remote sensing and GIS techniques with ongoing work on natural gas and oil seeps and deep-sea ecology in the Gulf of Mexico. He has recently published in 'Science' on 'Asphalt volcanism and chemosynthetic life in the Gulf of Mexico'. During his second Arctic cruise, Dr. MacDonald will be deploying underwater camera systems both under the ice and at the seafloor to assemble pictures, video, notes, and available dive data into detailed maps of the seafloor sampling areas. After the Arctic cruise, Dr. MacDonald will be heading out on a second Ocean Exploration cruise.
Cai Minghong
Chemical Oceanographer
Polar Biological Science
Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai
Cai Minghong is an Assistant Professor at the Polar Research Institute of China. His present research interests focus on the polar ecological system. He received his Masters Degree in Chemical Oceanography from Xiamen University, China, and spent one year with the Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, funded by SCAR Spanish Asturias Fellowship Awards in cooperation with Tasmania University. He has participated in the Chinese National Antarctic Research Expedition twice and Chinese Arctic National Arctic Research Expedition once. Cai Minghong has worked with the biological lab at the Polar Research Institute of China for 6 years. His activities include biological measurement on sea ice samples, such as flow cytometer measurements of particulate abundance and size distribution and scanning electron microscopy for microorganism identification. Since the second Chinese National Arctic Research Expedition, he, together with his Polar Biological Group, have carried out the study on the characteristics of pico-biota within the Arctic pack ice zone, mainly focused on the abundance and vertical distribution of viruses and the abundance and biomass of bacteria and pico-algae.
Eric Mittelstaedt
Graduate Student
SOEST
Born in the year of the Monkey, this sprightly young man grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes. His early years were mostly taken up by learning such life basics as walking, talking and that all important skill of chewing food without spitting up. As he grew, Eric graduated from high school and matriculated at UCLA with a B.S. in Astrophysics. He quickly fled the Astro-world in favor of Geophysics to avoid the boredom that is telescope time. After graduating in 2002 from UCLA, Eric began work on his Ph.D. at SOEST under his advisor Garrett Ito. He is currently working on the dynamics of ridge-jump behavior associated with plume-ridge interaction.
Sue E. Moore
NOAA Arctic Research Scientist
NOAA, Alaska Fisheries Science Center
Sue Moore received her doctorate from Scripps Institution
of Oceanography, with a dissertation entitled “Cetacean Habitats in the Alaskan Arctic” based
upon a decade of sighting data from offshore aerial surveys. She has served
as Director, and as Cetacean Program Leader, at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML) 
and is currently on detail to the
Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at the University of Washington to develop and
support acoustic and Arctic-related research programs for the Alaska Fisheries
Science Center. Sue serves on several Arctic-related scientific advisory
committees including: the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC) Science
Advisory Group (SAG); the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling
Commission; and the International Shelf Basin Exchange (SBE) project. She
has (co) authored over 50 scientific papers, many as first-author and most
focused on marine mammals offshore Alaska. One recent contribution was a
chapter entitled “Long-term
Environmental Change and Marine Mammals” prepared for the US Marine
Mammal Commission Consultation on Future Directions in Marine Mammal Research.
Mette Nielson
Graduate Student
Originally from Connecticut, Mette Nielson received a B.S. in Marine Biology at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Before starting a graduate program in Oregon, she took what was to be a month long trip to visit friends in Alaska. The month turned into several months, and she finally returned to Oregon a year later to collect her belongings and officially move to Anchorage. She was drawn to Alaska for its mountains and outdoor opportunities and currently lives in Fairbanks where she is a graduate student. Her research takes place on coastal sea ice near Barrow, Alaska where she is using a stable isotope approach to investigate the coastal Arctic food web and the effects of the changing ice environment on local fauna. Her focus is ice-associated amphipods that act as a link between food produced within the ice and higher trophic levels, including fish and seals. Through her work she hopes to gain insight into how the coastal food web will respond to shorter periods of ice cover, and how this might affect subsistence opportunities for native Alaskans living on the Arctic coast. When she isn't in the field, Ms. Nielson enjoys skiing, biking, climbing, and exploring Alaska's vast outdoors. During the Ocean Exploration Cruise she will be part of the sea ice team.
Jeremy Potter
Expedition Coordinator,
NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration
Jeremy Potter grew up in wild wonderful West Virginia and graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina. Immediately after college, he went to Alaska to work as an observer in the Bering Sea crab fishery, and later as an instructor at the Wallops Island Marine Science Consortium. In 1997, he moved to Japan and worked in a remote Japanese fishing village on Tsushima Island. In 2000, he returned to the United States to begin graduate school at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment. His fascination with the deep sea led him to NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration (OE), where he spent 2002 as a Knauss Marine Policy Sea Grant Fellow. Jeremy now dedicates most of his time at OE to the marine operations and science teams. During the 2005 field season, Jeremy will serve as OE Expedition Coordinator for the “Hidden Ocean” and “Banda Sea” cruises.
Jenny Purcell
Marine Scientist
Shannon Point Marine Center, Western Washington University
Dr. Jenny Purcell is currently a marine scientist at the Shannon Point Marine Center of Western Washington University. She received her PhD in 1981 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Purcell's research centers on the trophic interactions, population dynamics, and behavior of gelatinous zooplankton, especially cnidarians and ctenophores. She explores the roles of jellyfish as predators and competitors of zooplanktivorous fish, and climate effects on the formation of jellyfish blooms.
Kevin A. Raskoff
California State University, Monterey Bay
Dr. Raskoff is a member of the Pelagic group. He was born and raised in California and spent much of his youth tagging along on class field trips with his Geologist/Oceanographer father. These experiences began a life-long interest in the marine environment. He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles, but managed to spend all his time in Monterey Bay, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute working with undersea robotic vehicles and other cool high technologies used to study the ecology of soft-bodied, gelatinous deep-sea zooplankton. He is interested in all aspects of jellyfish biology and ecology and is one of the taxonomic experts on hydromedusae, particularly those species inhabiting deeper waters. He has extensive experience in using ROVs to study and collect these fragile organisms and has described many new species of jellyfish.
Steven Rutz
Data Coordinator
NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration
Steve Rutz grew up on the water, the inland lakes of Southwestern Michigan. In 1985, he graduated with a BS in Oceanography from the University of Michigan, and in 1987, he earned an MS in Marine Science from the University of South Carolina. Afterwards, he worked in the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M University, and in 1998, he began working at the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center. Recently, he was a member of a team awarded the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for development of an innovative data archiving system. This is his second cruise as a data manager for the NOAA Office of Exploration, having participated on the Life on the Edge cruise last year.
Dean Stockwell
Research Assistant Professor (Oceanography),
Institute of Marine Science, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences,
University of Alaska
Dean Stockwell is a biological oceanographer who has been studying polar waters (both Arctic and Antarctic) for more than 25 years. From ice camps to drill ships and from icebreakers to submarines, Dean has worked with marine phytoplankton in extreme environments. He has been at UAF seven years as a research professor and served at NSF as Associate Program Manager for Antarctic Biology and Medicine Program. As a phytoplankton taxonomist, Dean is primarily interested in what species of phytoplankton are present. How these plankton communities respond (both growth and competition) to light conditions, inorganic nutrients, grazing and advection is a primary interest. The Arctic environment presents phytoplankton communities with extremes in temperature, salinity, light and nutrients, all of which influence local phytoplankton assemblages. During the Arctic Exploration studies, however, Dean will assist in primary production estimates and biomass determinations.
Sarah Thornton
Research Technician
Institute of Marine Science
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Since beginning her oceanography career 13 years ago, Sarah Thornton has been involved in many investigations in the Arctic, Chukchi and Bering Seas, and the Gulf of Alaska. Currently working as a research technician for Dr. Terry Whitledge, she spends about 1/4 of the year at sea. Much of the time, she acts as a mooring technician, deploying moored nutrient and other oceanographic sensors. Other times, she participates in water sampling for dissolved nutrients (“plant food”) and algal concentrations and conducts primary productivity experiments. She received a B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia in 1994 and an M.S. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2003.
Terry Whitledge
Chemical and Biological Oceanographer
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Terry Whitledge is a chemical/biological oceanographer who has been studying the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean for more than 25 years with respect to nutrient dynamics and responses by the plankton communities. The requirement of light and inorganic nutrients by phytoplankton in order to grow often controls the food available to the higher tropic levels such as zooplankton and fishes. The complex interactions of winds, changing temperatures, ice cover, and freshwater input from the land create a physical environment that is nearly always changing and causes the growth of plankton to respond to a wide range of environmental conditions. The object of the Arctic Exploration studies is to document some of the nutrient and light effects on phytoplankton growth under the ice and in open water where it occurs. Analysis of the salinity and temperature along with nutrient and light conditions will allow for future predictions of the effects of global climate change in the Arctic as temperatures increase and ice cover diminishes.
Marsh Youngbluth
Senior Scientist
Division of Marine Science, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Dr. Marsh Youngbluth is a Senior Scientist with the Division
of Marine Science at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. He received
his undergraduate degree from Portland State University, a Master's degree
from the University of Hawaii (cleaning symbiosis among coral reef fishes),
and his PhD from Stanford University (diel migrations by krill in coastal
and oceanic regimes). His research projects in the field of biological
oceanography involve investigations of the biodiversity, behavior and ecology
of mesopelagic zooplankton. Recent studies have focused on the predatory
habits and metabolic rates of coronate medusae (fjords of Norway) and physonect
siphonophores (basins in Gulf of Maine and deep canyons along Georges Bank).
The roles of midwater tunicates (appendicularians) as mediators of particle
transport have also been examined. Dr. Youngbluth has worked as a visiting
scientist at the University of Umeå, Sweden, University
of Bergen, Norway, Japanese Center for Promotion of Science, Japan and National
Center for Scientific Research, France. He has served as a Program Director
(NSF Biological Oceanography Program and NOAA National Undersea Research
Program). Dr. Youngbluth pioneered the development of crewed (Johnson Sea-Link)
and robotic (Aglantha) submersibles for water column research. A firm
believer of employing "the right tools for the job," he continues
to utilize novel technologies for ongoing explorations of the mid-ocean realm. Read more about water column ecology .
