Abby Keller is a research assistant in Erik Cordes’ lab at Temple University, and she will be studying deep-sea coral and other members of the macro-faunal community at the Cascadia margin to understand how the methane seep is supporting life at various trophic levels. She graduated from Haverford College in 2017, and she has spent a summer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, exploring the microbiome community on the skin of humpback whales from the Gulf of Maine and on the surface of shallow-water coral from the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the Cordes lab she helps study the water chemistry that supports calcium carbonate-forming life in the deep sea, as well as studies the diversity and biogeography of deep-sea coral in various ecosystems, including the Gulf of Mexico’s oil-affected environment and the Phoenix Islands protected area. This will be her second research cruise aboard the R/V Falkor. In October 2017, she was part of the team that explored the seamounts of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area. She plans to attend graduate school to study the management of marine resources.
Cruises:
