Question: what part of the sea do you plan on investigating next. I watched the video you had on your blog and I found it so interesting, what role did you play ? From discovering these species in the sea what was you hoping to find

Heather Ritchie answered on 18 Jun 2014:

I currently work for a consortium called HADES (which stands for HADal Ecosystem Studies http://web.whoi.edu/hades/) and their next cruise is going to investigate the Mariana Trench which is the deepest trench in the world! I don’t know if I am going to be able to go on the cruise but I really hope I do! I’m not sure what other trenches are going to be looked at next but I would love to go to either the Java Trench or the South Sandwich Trench.

Thank you! I’m so glad to hear you found it interesting! On the boat I was involved in various things. I often cut up fish to put on the cameras and in the traps, attached the traps to the equipment, I also helped with deploying the equipment by pulling the quick release (I pulled a big bit of rope really hard and it dropped the equipment into the sea) and when we brought the traps up from the sea myself and my friend Ryan unattached the traps to pick out all the crustaceans and then separated them into samples where I froze some and others I put into ethanol to preserve them.

Every trip we hope to discover something – anything! – new and we are hardly ever disappointed. I love finding new species of amphipods that I work on. One trip we even found supergiants! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16834913) Because I’m interested in the genomics of these animals I want to look at the differences between the species of amphipods and try to work out their evolutionary history and how they have adapted to the deep-sea! I can also use their DNA to work out if amphipods in the different trenches are breeding with each other or not. It’s all very exciting stuff!