FSU Biological Oceanography

Biological Oceanography

Biological oceanographers study the ecology of the oceans. Their goal is to obtain a predictive understanding of the activities and distributions of marine organisms, from viruses to whales. Research in this field is often interdisciplinary, because the physics and chemistry of the ocean have important effects on organisms. Within biological oceanography, researchers use a variety of approaches. The currency of investigations may be the numbers of individuals of various species, the concentration of a nutrient, or the distribution of a gene.

Research programs at FSU are currently being conducted in many areas, including:

red tide monitoring in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (Clarke);
the ecology of sandy shelf beds (Huettel) and (Thistle);
the influence of currents and waves on bottom dwellers and sea grasses (Huettel);
effects of physical transport on mineralization in coastal sediments (Huettel);
physiology and ecology of marine phytoplankton (Iverson);
control of productivity in several estuaries adjacent to the eastern Gulf of Mexico (Iverson);
factors that control dinoflagellate bioluminescence (Iverson);
microbial ecology of a variety of ecosystems from the coastal ocean to the terrestrial subsurface (Kostka);
ecology of saltmarshes, seagrass beds, and mangrove forests (Kostka);
interactions between macrobenthos (plants, macrofauna) and microorganisms (Kostka);
dormancy in copepods (Marcus);
impact of hypoxia on coastal copepods (Marcus);
use of copepods in aquaculture (Marcus);
benthic community ecology in shallow water and in the deep sea (Thistle);
study of the organization of soft-bottom communities at all depths in the ocean (Thistle);
benthopelagic coupling on the continental shelf (Thistle);
the environmental consequences of injecting liquefied carbon dioxide on to the deep-sea floor (Thistle);
meirofaunal ecology, particularily that of harpacticoid copepods (Thistle);
the link between acoustic and motor behavior in cetaceans and manatees, specifically, how they use sound in ecological processes (Nowacek);
use of echolocation and foraging behavior in one of the odontocetes, the bottlenose dolphin (Nowacek);
the effect(s) of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals (Nowacek);