Dr. Marsh Youngbluth received his Master's degree in Zoology in 1966 from the University of Hawaii, and his Ph.D. in Biology in 1972 from Stanford University. He is a Senior Scientist with the Division of Marine Science at Harbor Branch Oceanographic institution. He has served as a visiting scientist at the University of Bergen, Norway, the Japanese Center for Promotion of Science, and National Center for Scientific Research in France. Dr. Youngbluth has also served as NSF Biological Oceanography Program Director, and as Program manager for the NOAA National Undersea Research Program.

Dr. Youngbluth's research interests in the field of biological oceanography center around the ecology and biodiversity of mesopelagic particle transport and flux. With respect to appendicularians, Dr. Youngbluth is primarily interested in their ecological role as sinks and sources for particle transport. Active research interests also include functional ecology of the various gelatinous zooplankton comprising Phylum Cnidaria and Phylum Ctenophora.

Much of Dr. Youngbluth's work employs the Harbor Branch JOHNSON SEA-LINK research submersibles. A firm believer in employing "the right tools for the job," Dr. Youngbluth continues to utilize innovative technologies in the ongoing exploration of the mid-ocean realm.

Dr. Alex Bochdansky is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Dr. W. C. Legget at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. The focus of his research is the bioenergetic cost of growth in marine fish larvae, and the examination of food-limited growth during early life stages in fish. Alex received his Ph.D. in 1997 from Memorial University, Newfoundland, under the advisorship of recognized appendicularian expert Dr. Don Deibel. His dissertation research centered around feeding physiology of the coldwater appendicularian tunicate Oikopleura vanhoeffeni.

Dr. Bochdansky's research interests revolve around the use of bioenergetic models as tools to extract and model energy and material flows through functional groups of marine suspension feeding zooplankton. Central to this issue are the identification and mapping of pathways, the definition of boundary conditions, the temporal and spatial availability and quality of food, the efficiency of transformation of ingested energy into reproduction and growth, and the relevance of zooplankton as a food source for higher trophic levels. The results of this research are relevant to the understanding of the export of carbon from the photic zone and to the availability of prey items for larval stages of commercially important fish species.

A major emphasis of Dr. Bochdansky's research has been on food availability. Traditional views of food availability may not accurately reflect actual conditions in some instances. One example relevant to the current research mission is appendicularians, which cannot ingest diatom chains and large dinoflagellates because inlet filters on their feeding structures prevent these cells from entering the digestive tract. Clearance rates are depressed at high cell concentrations resulting in frequent and unsustainable renewal of their gelatinous filtering devices leading to a net energy loss despite high particle concentrations.

Dr. Victoria Fabry is an Associate Professor and Program Director for the Biological Sciences Program at California State University San Marcos. She received her Master's degree in 1983, and her Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of California Santa Barbara.

Dr. Fabry's background as a biogeochemist has allowed her the opportunity to study the large-scale flux of various carbon and other elemental compounds between the atmosphere, shallow waters, and the deep seas. Much of her past research has focused on mineralization processes in the shells of phytoplanktonic coccolithophores and pelagic pteropod and heteropod molluscs. She has previously collaborated with HBOI Marine Science investigator Marsh Youngbluth in an examination of the biologically mediated accumulation of trace elements by mesopelagic appendicularians.

Professor Per Flood received his Doctorate in 1966 from the University of Bergen, Norway. Dr. Flood served as Professor at the University's Institute of Anatomy from 1966 to 1992, and as Professor in the Department of Zoology from 1992 to 1997. Currently, he is principal research scientist for Bathybiologica A/S.

Dr. Flood first described the structural characteristics of appendicularian feeding filters in a 1973 publication. Since then, he has made significant contributions to the understanding of appendicularian feeding house architecture and function, mucus production and histo-chemistry, and bioluminescence. In a 1992 publication in Nature, Dr. Flood and colleagues documented the ability of appendicularians to filter colloid-sized dissolved matter from seawater, strongly suggesting that the animals may be able to use dissolved organic compounds as a food resource.

Dr. Flood co-authored a chapter on the structure and function of appendicularian houses, and a second chapter on appendicularian bioluminescence in a 1998 volume entitled The Biology of Pelagic Tunicates (Bone, ed.).

Dr. Russ Hopcroft is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska's Institute of Marine Science, Fairbanks. he also functions as an adjunct faculty member of the University of the West Indies Department of Life Sciences, in Kingston, Jamaica.

Dr. Hopcroft received his Masters degree in 1988, and his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The focus of his graduate research was on marine plankton ecology. From 1997 to 1999, Dr, Hopcroft was a 1999 Post-doctoral Fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).

Primary interests focus on the composition, production and energy flow of pelagic ecosystems. Particular interest in tropical marine ecology, development of better methods of assessing the biomass and production of planktonic organisms, and the modeling of aquatic communities. Dr. Hopcroft is motivated to a broad array of research pursuits, with specialization on the taxonomy, biology and ecology of pelagic tunicates. His interests extend to most free-living protist and invertebrate taxa including the benthos, as these "lower" trophic levels ultimately shape the structure of all aquatic communities.