As a marine biologist, I am interested in the animals residing in the deep waters. I have a specific love for deep-sea zooplankton and study their diversity, abundance and community composition in relation to (future) mining activities.
Keywords
Marine zooplankton, hydrothermal vents (SMS), nodules (PMN), deep-sea mining, Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge (AMOR), Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, genomics and morphology
Projectdescription
The ocean, with all its extraordinary organisms, has always fascinated me. Especially hydrothermal vent systems have drawn my attention, as they are one of the structures at the ocean floor that provide habitat for a variety of organisms. The polymetallic sulphides that accrete there are of economic value which makes them a place of interest for potential future deep-sea mining. However, they are not the only mineral rich formations drawing attention, as polymetallic manganese nodules also contain elements of economic value. But what happens to the pelagic organisms when mining processes above these systems would occur?
To shed light on this topic, I aim to provide baseline measurements of zooplankton diversity, composition and connectivity in the watercolumn above hydrothermal vent fields in the Arctic ocean and polymetallic manganese nodules in the Pacific ocean. For this, I will use morphological and molecular techniques to capture a broad range of taxa across different depths and regions.
