Participant Perspective - July 29, 2001

Interview with Amanda Bates
Marine Biologist - University of Victoria

Jeff G: What do you think of being at sea?

Amanda: This is my second cruise. Most of my background is in marine ecology and field ecology so I've spent most of my time in boats in the intertidal. For me, I feel more distant from the science here because I'm not putting the arrays down on the ocean floor. I'm telling someone else to do it for me. It's a totally different experience. I think it's neat out here because of the people you get to work with, chemists, geologists, and microbiologists. I don't know of any other science situation where this number of people with such broad expertise work together and are asking questions together. That's really unique and I love it. However, I get really seasick, so on a personal level it's not really fun.

Jeff: What projects are you working on here at Axial volcano?

Amanda: I'm working on three projects: Where the larvae come from, what's the ideal habitat for the recruits, and what's going on with their feeding habitats? I have temperature and sulfide gradient chambers set up in the lab and I'm putting limpets and snails in there to see if there's any temperature or sulfide preference. I'm trying to see if they are crawling up the chamber to a certain< temperature or are they clumping in different sulfide concentrations? I'm working with a physiologist who is going to look at their tolerance for these two parameters. These two animals are so interesting because they can handle such high temperatures and high sulfide concentrations. I'm also interested in limpet feeding strategy and their habitats. The limpets are really interesting because they have bacteria living in their gills. I've sampled limpets from different habitats and I'm trying to figure out if there is a greater density of bacteria in their gills at higher concentrations of sulfide. We're investigating this because limpets are very successful at the vents. You go down and there are limpets everywhere in all sorts of habitats, warm water (20 degrees Celsius) right down to ambient seawater (2.3 degrees Celsius). From just looking at their gills I'm finding that they're doing different things in different habitats. I can already see that they are suspension feeding and potentially feeding on their symbionts in warmer water and in the cooler water it looks like they are grazing off bacterial mats. My last project involves working on the larval settlement array experiment with Anna Metaxas. We're looking at where the recruits (larvae) are settling. We don't really know anything about the larvae.

Jeff: How did you become interested in marine biology?

Amanda: I grew up in the desert so growing up I didn't have a lot of experience with the ocean. When I first came to the ocean it was mind-blowing and I was amazed by the intertidal. I ended up going to the Banfield Marine Station to do undergraduate research. That got me interested in marine biology. I thought the vents would be a totally unique ecosystem. It's a fabulous experience. It was largely all my marine ecology volunteer work that hooked me. It's also the lifestyle. I get to go to an awesome university and live by the beach and go kayaking every day. If you want to live by the ocean it's a good idea to be a marine biologist.