Ocean Exploration Home

Project Manager

Tamara Frank

Description

The department of visual ecology studies various aspects of the visual ecology of marine animals. The study of vision in deep-sea animals provides a unique opportunity to examine how the visual systems of animals are specialized for extremely high sensitivity in dim light environments, both optically and physiologically. In addition, studies are also being conducted on how downwelling light controls both the distribution patterns of deep-sea animals as well as their vertical migrations, which are the largest animal migrations on earth. Many vertical migrators are primary sources of nutrition for various life history stages of commercially important fish species, as well as being some of the major predators of fish larvae. In spite of the enormous impact this behavior has in the world’s oceans, little is known about the mechanisms cueing the daily timing of this behavior, other than that light is involved.

Our lab is studying both the light cues involved in vertical migrations, as well as how light controls the daytime distribution patterns of both migrators and non-migrators. Any changes in the downwelling light field due to changes in atmospheric conditions or water quality could have significant effects on community structure, affecting both stable depth distributions as well as the daily variations that occur during vertical migrations. How profound these effects may be can’t be modeled until we understand how sensitive these animals are to light, and how they respond to normal variations in the light field.