People

Murray Roberts
Murray is a Professor of Marine Biology in the Centre for Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology at Heriot-Watt University, and studies the biology and ecology of deep-sea or cold-water corals. He is the expedition leader for this cruise, meaning he has the responsibility of planning and coordinating the entire cruise, and managing the science party while at sea. Murray recently added two whippet puppies to his family and hopes they are fully-trained when he gets home from the cruise!
Murray Roberts

Laura is a research associate at Heriot-Watt University, where she looks at the effect that ocean acidification and warming will have on cold-water corals. She also runs the www.Lophelia.org website, and associated Twitter feed and Facebook page. On this cruise, she will be part of 'Team Coral', collecting live corals to use in short and long-term experiments at sea and back in Edinburgh. She is also the blogmeister of the cruise and will be celebrating her 30th birthday whilst at sea.
Laura Wicks

Seb is a Research Associate at Heriot-Watt University, where he examines the effects of Ocean Acidification and warming on the cold water coral Lophelia pertusa and on coralline algae. On this cruise, Seb will be performing short and long-term experiments on L. pertusa as part of Team Coral. In his spare time, Seb likes hill walking, playing guitar and taking photos of wildlife. On this trip, Seb will be one of the blog photographers.
Seb hennige
Juan Moreno-Navas
Juan is an oceanographer, GIS scientist and commercial diver who studies the ecology of cold-water corals. His research interest centre on coastal and oceanic hydrodynamic modeling, marine spatial analysis and computational ecology. Current research focuses on the development of 3D Hydrodynamic and Particle Tracking models for modeling and mapping general circulation, water exchange and the spatial analysis of biodiversity patterns in cold-water coral habitats. Juan loves computers, cooking and diving.


Juan Moreno Navas
Rowan Byrne
Rowan is an Energy Postgraduate Researcher at Heriot-Watt who previously worked with sharks, dugongs and satellite tracking of endangered leatherback sea turtles. He is a keen diver and underwater photographer (www.marinecreaturesstockphoto.com). Rowans Masters work will be investigating the effects of stored carbon dioxide on marine species and ecosystems from possible leaked deep sea carbon capture and storage facilities, and investigating the environmental impacts of this technology.
 
Rowan Byrne
Sarah Fitzek
Sarah is a Masters student in marine biology at Heriot-Watt University. Since diving at the Great Barrier Reef, she is fascinated by the appearance of coral reef structures. To avoid the degradation of these creatures she is interested in the role of climate change and the current impacts. Therefore, on the cruise she will monitor changes of the respiration rate of cold-water corals with increasing ocean water temperature.
Sarah Fitzek

Lisette Victorero Gonzalez
Lisette is an undergraduate marine biology student in her 4th year at Heriot-Watt University. She became interested in coral reefs through diving. In her Honours project Lisette studied the biodiversity of Mingulay Area 1 Reef and Banana Reef, using environmental-spatial data to explain any patterns observed. She is very excited about the opportunity to join this cruise and visit the Mingulay Reef Complex, which has been a great part of her life during her final year. In her spare time Lisette really enjoy playing ultimate frisbee, although won't be trying that at sea!
Lisette Victorero Gonzalez
Penny is a PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow, where she examines the effects of global climate change on marine calcifying animals. She is very excited about the cruise as it is an amazing opportunity to work with some creatures from the deep sea that would normally be inaccessible. Penny will be working primarily with the cold water coral Lophelia pertusa as part of Team Coral. In her spare time, Penny enjoys anything that means she is outside in the sunshine!
Penelope Donohue
Rosanna is currently in the second year of her PhD, studying the effects of natural and anthropogenic drivers on deep-sea fish communities from the deep water oil fields off Angola to the continental slopes and abyssal plains of the north-east Atlantic. Her main aim for this cruise is to use the video and photographic data collected by the ROV to investigate how deep-water fish communities use the different seafloor habitats like the Lophelia reefs and seamounts, and how aggregations of fish vary between the sites. Out of the office, she is a keen SCUBA diver and marine wildlife photographer (Wildoceanphotography.com) and she will be one of the photographers for the cruise.
Georgios Kazanidis
Georgios is a new PhD student at the University of Aberdeen studying the potential effects of climate change on deep-sea ecosystems. On this cruise he will study the metabolism (respiration and feeding) of deep-sea sponges and corals, using on-board and in situ experiments with isotopically-labeled substrates.
Georgios Kazandis

John Polanski
John is an electronics technician at Oceanlab and just found out recently he was on the cruise. Looking forward to being back on the James Cook and he’ll be assisting Georgios with his studies on sponges and corals and making sure everything he has made works the way it should. John is a keen cyclist (competing in the Etape Caledonia the weekend before we leave) and motorcyclist and has also hiked extensively in the Swiss Alps and Pyrenees.
John Polanski
Veerle is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton (UK). Her work generally focuses on habitat mapping and sediment transport studies around cold-water coral reefs, submarine canyons and hydrothermal vents, and she loves working with underwater robotic systems (i.e. ROVs and AUVs). Therefore, during this cruise, she will be involved in ship-borne & ROV-borne multibeam bathymetry mapping, in the video surveys, and she will carry out gravity coring to obtain sediment records that take us back thousands of years in time. On previous cruises, Veerle has often been spotted with knitting needles and an extensive supply of wool...
Veerle Huvenne

Claudia is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. In her PhD she researched benthic deep-sea invertebrates at the Mid-Atlantic ridge, with a particular interest in sea cucumbers. On this cruise her work will look at benthic invertebrates and their adaptations relative to their distance to corals. She will be sampling the benthos with box corers and will carry out in-situ experiments on board the ship.
Claudia Alt

Silvana is a senior marine benthic ecologist and scientific advisor on issues related to benthic ecology and human activities at the Centre of Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas). Her research mainly focuses on the effects resulting from human activities on benthic infauna.  She works with situ observations (i.e. Sediment profile camera –SPI). These observations have been valuable for indicator development in support the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). She also has been conducting experiments to mimic the effects of ocean acidification in contaminated sediments with a marine invertebrate. During the expedition She will be part of the ‘SPI team’ which will be collecting in situ images to characterise the sediment communities adjacent to  cold coral areas. Silvana is also the co-chair the ICES study group on Climate related benthic processes in the North Sea (SGCBNS). Her forward look after the cruise will be getting home and checking on her nearest and dearest including the new family addition ‘the fish tank’
Silvana Birchenough

Helen is a biological oceanographer at Plymouth Marine Laboratory studying how ocean acidification and warming effect ocean organisms, and how those changes feed back on the carbon cycle. On this cruise, Helen will be measuring the carbon and carbonate system parameters to investigate what conditions these reef organisms’ experience. Helen has spent the last couple of years working in the Arctic on sea ice, so is looking forward to being surrounded by water that isn't frozen!
Helen Findlay

Nigel Lyman
Nigel is an operations manager for Cefas. He was born in the West Midlands (about as far from the sea as you can get in Britain), where he went to school and did what boys do – ie muck around, get dirty fall out of trees and generally drove his parents to despair. After studying applied physics at Portsmouth Polytechnic, he travelled for a couple of years, a trip starting and ending at the Oktoberfest in Munich with overland travel to Australia interspersed with climbing in Kenya and the Himalayas, and generally having a laugh. Then it was time to become responsible and get a job! This meant working for an offshore survey company ‘Svitzer Ltd’ undertaking site surveys for oil companies. In 1999 he was blessed with the birth of Imogen, first of two girls followed by Harriet in 2001. In 2002 he married Michelle and joined Cefas. His interests are rowing, running (with Harriet), building a kit car and being a crew member of the Lowestoft Lifeboat. The latter he really enjoys as the other crew members are really great people and you know that when you have a shout at 3am on a cold and windy January morning that you can rely on them. Otherwise being a father/husband and work seems to take up the rest of his life ……
Nigel Lyman

Anne Cotton
Anne is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Hull where she studies the effect of ocean acidification on microbes in a variety of places from coastal sands and muds to worm intestines. She’ll be using this cruise to study the microbes associated with the coldwater coral Lophelia pertusa, trying to understand what microbes are present on the coral, what affects them and what functions they have. This will be the first time Anne’s spent more than an hour on a boat and she’s really looking forward to the new experience of life and work on a cruise.
Anne Cotton

Cova is a researcher from the Spanish Oceanographic Institute (IEO) in Spain. She studies the biology and ecology of cold water corals. During this cruise she will carry out feeding ecology experiments with the coral Lophelia pertusa and develop studies on reproduction and histochemistry on this coral species as well as on other cnidarians. The new findings from this experimental work will help us to better understand the functional ecology of these bioengineers of the deep.
Covadonga Orejas

Geoff serves as a research geneticist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska. He currently studies the utility of molecular genetics for supporting the management of commercial and subsistence marine fisheries, the conservation of marine mammals in Arctic waters, population genetics and the conservation of deep-sea corals across the Alaskan seascape, and diseases of corals and other marine organisms. Geoff joins the "Changing Oceans" expedition as part of an international collaborative effort to investigate the effect(s) of ocean acidification on the composition and function of microbial communities associated with the cold-water Lophelia pertusa. When he is not under the waterline, Geoff enjoys trekking through Alaska's back-country.
Geoffrey Cook
Janina is a Masters student in biological oceanography at GEOMAR (Christian-Albrechts-University) in Kiel, where she examines the impacts of ocean acidification and temperature rise on cold-water corals and coralline red algae. During this cruise she will be involved in the long-term incubation experiments and will be analysing respiration rates and the fitness state of Lophelia pertusa at different climate change related conditions.
Janina Buscher
Karl is a PhD student at the University of Southern Denmark, where he studies the physics and biogeochemistry at boundary layers in aquatic systems using a newly-developed ‘Aquatic Eddy-Correlation’ (AEC) lander system. For the past 12 months Karl has been living in Greenland where he has been deploying his AEC system in various shallow benthic environments and under sea-ice. Having never previously worked on deep-sea ecosystems, Karl is eager to take up the new set of challenges that this cruise will present.
Karl Attard

Darren Young
Darren has been employed by NERC for over 13 years, working onboard Research Vessels in support of NERC science as a multi-disciplinary Technician (Mechanical). His day job when not away at sea has been Project Managing research cruises on NERC and Barter vessels. He is responsible for the cruises from the earliest stages of the planning all the way through to 'Post cruise analysis'. During JC073 he will be supporting the coring, dredging, trawling and many other activities.
Darren Young
Terry Edwards
Terry is currently the acting NMF-SS Head of Engineering. He has sailed on behalf of NERC on many research cruises over the last 13 years as a multi-disciplinary seagoing technician (Instrumentation). He will be supporting CTD, MVP and other activities during the cruise. Terry will also be the STO (Senior Technical Officer) during the cruise.
Terry Edwards

David Edge
David is a ROV tech / Pilot based at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton where he supports the national Isis ROV facility. On this cruise he will be primarily supporting the ROV operations. In his spare time he enjoys golf, table tennis, photography and his 5 flatcoat gundogs.
David Edge

James Burris
James is a technician in the Sensors and Moorings group at National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. He will be working on maintaining and deploying equipment including CTDs and towed systems (i.e. the Moving Vessel Profiler). He comes from a background working offshore in seismic surveys and hydrography and has also worked on ROV video inspections. His educational background includes underwater optics and acoustics, and commercial diving. James spends most of his spare time outdoors and has a strong interest in photography.
James Burris

Jon Seddon
Jon is a technician from National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. He will be looking after the sonar and computer systems on the vessel. As this is his first ROV cruise he is looking forward to learning about how ROVs operate. Outside of work he enjoys sailing and kayaking.
Jon Seddon