Dr. Erik Cordes is a deep sea ecologist and Principal Investigator at Temple University. He received his M.S. from Moss Landing Marine Labs, his Ph.D. from Penn State University and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. He has worked on the ecology of the deep sea for over 20 years, spending over a year at sea on 22 research cruises and making over 30 dives in the manned submersibles Alvin and Johnson Sea-Link. His work is centered around the ability of organisms to shape their environment and increase habitat heterogeneity, but has increasingly become focused on the ability for humans to impact these processes in the deep sea.
