Question: Will the research done by aberdeen university aid you in your research

Abyssal Grenadier answered on 23 Nov 2017:

Hi Oliandhislolly,

I (Heather) currently work at the University of Aberdeen. I previously worked on the abyssal grenadier where I used genetic information to determine whether the abyssal grenadier could move across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (which is a big split in the sea floor of the Atlantic) and whether the grenadiers in the Atlantic were connected to grenadiers in the Indian Ocean. It turns out that these fish are such good swimmers and there are so many of them they are connected over this huge amount of water! (We published the results here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064513002440)

One of the other champions for the abyssal grenadier (Thom) has also done some work on them. Unlike me Thom hasn’t used genetic data to study these animals before. His skills involve looking through hours and hours of video and photographs to determine how many of these fish are found across different part of the world, and at different water depths. He has also done some cool work looking at stomach contents and working out what sort of food abyssal grenadiers like to eat.

Both Thom and myself did our PhDs at the University of Aberdeen. I still work there but Thom now works at Newcastle University and so does Johanna (our third champion!). Both the University of Aberdeen and Newcastle University do deep-sea research so we are hoping that we can work on all of this together. It’s always really good to be able to work with different universities and different people to do the best science possible.