MGLN07MV

Collaborative Research: Site evaluations and background studies of interactions among fluid chemistry, physiology, and community ecology for Ridge 2000 Lau Basin Integrated Studies; Biology, fluids, rock sampling; from Chuck Fisher's website: This cruise was a follow-up expedition to the 2005 Lau Basin cruise that studied the ecology, physiology and chemistry of the vents and fauna found here. Again, the chief scientist was Dr. Chuck Fisher. Our research group composition changed a little from the 2005 cruise and included researchers from Dr. Fisher’s lab at Penn State (K. Zelnio, L. Podoski, E. Becker), University of Delaware, Moss Landing Marine Laboratory (in California), Harvard University, Station Biologique Roscoff (in France), University of the South Pacific, and the Fijian and Tongan Governments. The Fisher Lab’s role was to continue the studies and sampling started during the 2005 cruise including photo-mosaics, quantitative snail and mussel community collections, collecting specimens for systematic and stable isotope food web studies, recover last year’s data loggers and deploy new ones and explore more of the seafloor as time permits. Other research groups goals included continuing reproductive studies of vent fauna, further studies on the communities peripheral to the vents, characterizing mussel chemoautotrophic symbiont’s population and phylogenetic structure, continued sampling of vent water for chemistry, temperature and in situ chemical measurements of vent communities, seafloor bathymetric mapping and systematic study of polynoid and siboglinid polychaetes.