Nicole Morgan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Biological Oceanography at the department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University. She received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 where she also engaged in undergraduate research in anthropogenic impacts on seagrass bed and coral reefs. The research focused on non-point pollution in the Yucatán Peninsula that resulted in increased algal coverage in ecologically important habitats.
In 2011 she entered into a M.Sc. program at Florida State University that focused on describing the community ecology of a previously unexplored deep-sea feature in the North Pacific called Necker Ridge. The research found highly variable communities of invertebrates within the ridge, especially on either side of a deeper cut on the ridge.
She finished her M.Sc. in 2013 and started her current Ph.D. program in 2014. She is still focused on deep-sea invertebrate communities, but is studying several seamounts in the North Pacific with different histories of human impacts (trawling) to understand if and how deep-sea communities are able to recover from this destructive fishing practice. During her time at FSU, Nicole has been on nine research cruises, both in the North Pacific and in the Gulf of Mexico, to collect samples, and her favorite experiences so far have been the 14 dives in the submersible Pisces IV.
