- Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?
I was born and raised on suburban Long Island, New York, just a few miles from the beaches on the south shore. As an undergraduate at Duke University in North Carolina, I spent lots of time at the Duke Marine Laboratory on the coast, despite originally being a card-carrying member of the pre-med society. By the time I became heavily involved in research at the Marine Lab, I had given up serious interest in medical school. I graduated with a B.S. with Distinction in Zoology because of my independent research project at the Marine Lab. I went to graduate school at the University of California Santa Barbara and received a Ph.D. degree in Neurobiology, even though I studied bioluminescence from a physiological/ecological point of view. I stayed at UCSB for another 4 years as a postdoctoral researcher until I was ready to leave and confront the real world on my own.
- How did you become interested in marine biology?
I had always been interested in the ocean, probably from spending my summers at the beaches of Long Island. But I never took it seriously as a career. I remember going to a career night while in 9th grade and hearing an oceanographer talk about career opportunities as a government oceanographer (whatever that is!). That summer I took a summer course called "Oceanography" in which we visited different shoreline habitats on Long Island and tried to do experiments in a sweltering non-air conditioned classroom. I loved it! It wasn't until my undergraduate experience at the Duke Marine Lab, where I participated in a spring semester program in marine biology, that I had a healthy and positive experience and developed my love of research. Nothing was more natural than continuing directly into graduate school.
- What are your favorite fish?
I have two favorites, both of which live in deep waters. Lantern fish (myctophids) are very intriguing to me. Here is a fish that vertically migrates, swimming hundreds of meters up at dusk to feed at night and then swimming back down again at dawn (to hide in dim midwaters during the day), yet they are so delicate that they survive for no more than several hours when collected. Lantern fish produce dim glowing from the ventral surface of their body for luminescent countershading, which serves to make them more cryptic to predators below them that are looking up and scanning for silhouettes of potential prey. Lantern fish also produce bright flashes from luminescent organs on their tail to help protect themselves from predators.
Lantern fish live at depths of 300-400 m during the day, where they are associated with deep scattering layers (that show up on sonar), and at night they can swim all the way up to the surface where they can be dipnetted.
Another favorite is the hatchetfish, another member of the midwater community. Perhaps you have seen pictures of these unique fish. These small fish resemble silver dollars because are laterally flattened and have a reflective body. As in other midwater animals, hatchetfish are vulnerable to being detected by predators located below them that look up to scan for silhouettes. Their flattened shape helps reduce the size of their silhouette, and their silvery body helps reflect light rather than absorb it. Hatchetfish also produce downward-directed glowing that serves to countershade their body and help further reduce their silhouette. But like most animals, hatchetfish are also predators as well as potential prey. They have tubular eyes that look upwards, scanning for silhouettes of other midwater animals. They also have a mouth oriented to catch prey located above them. So while hatchetfish are very concerned with reducing their own silhouette in the midwater environment, where there is literally no place to hide, at the same time they are searching for prey based on the latter's silhouettes. It's a perfect representation of life in the ocean's midwater depths.
- How did you get interested in bioluminescence?
When I started grad school, I had a project already in mind (not involving bioluminescence), and within weeks of arriving was busy working on it. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. So my second year I tried another project (also not involving bioluminescence) that unfortunately also didn't work out. So at the beginning of my third year in grad school my advisor gave me a choice: I could continue working on my unsuccessful project -- but in another lab! So I felt a little pressured to find a project that would work. I happened to read a book by a Japanese scientist on oceanic shrimps of the world, and saw a picture of a midwater (deep-sea) shrimp that was supposed to be bioluminescent, even though no one knew why. The "why" and "how" of bioluminescence in that shrimp became the basis of my successful dissertation research.
The story doesn't end here. Years later I became friends with this same Japanese scientist, who by now was a well-known professor of oceanography in Tokyo. Turns out he was the scientific advisor of a commercial fishery based on a Japanese shrimp very similar to the one I had studied as a grad student. My Japanese colleague had spent some 10 years trying to study bioluminescence in this shrimp but without success. He invited me to visit Japan and work with him to demonstrate that the shrimp was luminescent. To make a long story short, our very first experiments successfully showed that the shrimp was luminescent. In fact, the luminescence may be important in the shrimp's swarming behavior, which is crucial to the success of the fisheries because the fishermen locate swarms of the shrimp using fish finders (echosounders). So I felt as though I had repaid my Japanese colleague, who had unknowingly helped me years back when I saw that picture in his book and got inspired to study bioluminescence.
- What is your favorite story?
I remember going on my first submersible (small research sub) dive and just about exploding from needing to go to the bathroom after 4 hours, but I'd rather not dwell on that. Or I could talk about experiencing Hurricane Bob in the north Atlantic during 1991, when it was so rough you couldn't sit in a chair, stand up, or even sleep. I also remember snorkeling in the Bahamas -- gloriously clear water, chasing after turtles and having large jellyfish float by.
Most of my time at sea has been spent studying deep-sea animals, which are normally too deep to study in their natural habitat. So we have trawl nets which we drag through the water at various depths to collect animals which we can then study in the shipboard laboratory. You never know what will be collected. Everything from exotic deep-sea fish with glowing lures, flashing lantern fish, brightly luminescent euphausiids (krill), to jellyfish so delicate they disintegrate at the slightest touch. Once we retrieve the trawl to find it draped with the catch (attack) tentacle from a giant squid, which apparently tried to attack our trawl net (perhaps mistaking it for a whale). For some studies we retrieved the animals under dark conditions so as not to damage their eyes, which are highly light sensitive as an adaptation to the dim light environment of the deep sea. Of course this made it difficult to see the animals until we were well dark adapted. In the deep sea, the largest habitat on earth, animals have well-developed eyes not to see sunlight, which is dim or nonexistent, but to detect bioluminescence, the only source of light at these depths.
- What will your career be like in the future?
The career of a research scientist is very dynamic, with its ups and downs based on funding cycles. One thing we don't have to worry about is boredom. Even as we work on our current projects, we are constantly developing new ideas for future projects. Thus the world of research is a cycle of present and future endeavors, always on the frontiers of knowledge. To me, this aspect of science is the most thrilling and rewarding. I have always considered the pursuit of knowledge one of the most satisfying endeavors. So if you want to know where I envision myself 10 years from now, my answer is -- I have no idea!
