Principal Investigator
Craig Smith obtained his Ph.D. from Scripp’s Institution of Oceanography in 1983 and is currently a Professor of Oceanography at the University of Hawai’i. He has strong interests in biodiversity, disturbance ecology, and human impacts in seafloor ecosystems. Craig has conducted research in Antarctica, mangroves, submarine canyons, organic-fall communities, cold seeps, continental slopes, and abyssal plains to obtain a broad perspective of natural and stressed marine ecosystems. He has lead over 50 research expeditions from the equator to Antarctica, and has conducted over 100 HOV, ROV and AUV dives. Craig has also published over 140 papers in the scientific literature on seafloor ecology, biodiversity, climate-change impacts, and the design of marine protected areas. Email: craigsmi@hawaii.edu
Postdoctoral Fellow
Travis Washburn received his Ph.D. in 2017 at the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. His expertise is in benthic ecology, and the use of macrofaunal communities to measure human disturbance. Ph.D. work examined the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the deep Gulf of Mexico and communities associated with natural hydrocarbon seeps. Travis has spent his time after graduation researching possible risks associated with deep-sea mining and community baselines associated with areas to be mined. Work at the University of Hawaii involves exploring seafloor communities associated with manganese nodules and synthesizing available data from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in preparation for mining activities. Travis has worked in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico on communities from tidal creeks to the abyss. He has taken part on many research cruises and published papers on topics from impacts of coastal development to oil spills/deep-mining and risk assessments to ecosystem services. Email: twashbur@hawaii.edu.
Graduate Students
Pavica Srsen has interests in the areas of benthic ecology and conservation biology. She earned a B.S. in Biology-Ecology in 2004 from the University of Zagreb in Croatia, where she studied the cryptofauna of a bank-forming coral Cladocora caespitosa in the Adriatic Sea. After her graduation, she worked as a conservation biologist in a National Park on the Adriatic coast and this experience gave her an insight into conservation issues, especially invasive species in the marine protected areas. She became particularly interested in how climate change and the warming oceans become more susceptible to species invasions. Currently at the Department of Oceanography at University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), Pavica studies benthic ecology and effects of climate change on possibly the fastest warming ocean on the Earth – the Southern Ocean. The focus of her M.S. research at UHM (completed in 2012) was benthic ecology of the Antarctic Peninsula; in particular, how the megafaunal and macrofaunal community structure and biomass of the shelf benthos vary with variations in sea-ice duration. She is currently a Ph.D candidate at UHM and is studying the effects of ice-shelf collapse (that was induced by climate change) in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Specifically, she is interested how food-web structure, faunal community structure, succession and diversity were affected by this change. She is using various tools for this: stable isotopes, image analyses of bottom photos for megafauna and microscopic analyses for macrofauna. Email: pavica@hawaii.edu
Emily Young is currently working towards a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography. She graduated with a M.Sci. in Marine Biology from the University of Southampton, UK, where she developed her interest in deep-sea ecology and reducing environments. Emily has also studied at the University of Iceland, acted as a teaching assistant on a deep-sea ecology course at Friday Harbor Laboratories, WA, and has participated in fieldwork and research cruises within the NE Pacific and the SW Atlantic. At the University of Hawai’i, Emily’s research is focused on the BoWLs project; investigating deep-sea biodiversity, connectivity and ecosystem function associated with organic-fall substrates, as investigated through the use of experimentally deployed bone and wood landers. Twitter: @emilyyoung92 Email: elyoung@hawaii.edu
Amanda Ziegler is a graduate student working toward a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography on the FjordEco project. My work focuses on exploring the environmental drivers behind the structure and function of megabenthic communities in fjords along the West Antarctic Peninsula. I primarily employ image analysis techniques using a variety of platforms (ROV, AUV, towed camera, time-lapse) as well as interdisciplinary methods such as hydrodynamic/particle-tracking modeling and stable isotopic analyses. I am also generally interested in human impacts in the deep sea and have been involved in the ABYSSLINE project assessing the abundance and diversity of benthic megafauna in regions targeted for future deep-sea mining within the CCZ. Website: personal website here Twitter: @AmandaFZiegler Email: ziegler8@hawaii.edu
Staff
Iris Altamira has been with the Smith Lab for over ten years. She is the current lab manager but spends most of her time identifying polychaetes from a range of habitats. When she does have spare time, you can find her doing incredible marine-influenced art. Email: irisis@hawaii.edu
Past Postdoctoral Researchers
Amanda Demopolous, Victor Evrard, Elizabeth Galley, Adrian Glover, Laura Grange, Sarah Mincks, Paulo Sumida, Andrew Sweetman, Diva Amon, Clifton Nunnally, Jennifer Durden
Past Graduate Students
Steven Brumsickle (M.S. 1989), Bruce Bennett (M.S. 1990), Helmut Kukert (M.S 1990), Shawn Doan (M.S. 1994), Paul Parnell (M.S. 1992, Ph.D. 2000), Daniel Hoover (M.S.1995), Robert Miller (M.S. 1997), Amy Baco (Ph.D. 2002), Amanda Jones (M.S. 2000, Ph.D. 2004), Sarah Mincks (Ph.D. 2005), Bryan Nakahara (M.S. 2007), Fabio Cabrera-De Leo (Ph.D. 2012)
Past Undergraduate Students
Christian Clark, Michael Derocher, Colin Seifer, Kelsey Chung, McKenna Lewis
Craig Smith's Benthic Ecology Lab 