EIC EcoWatch Achievers : Dr. Brigitte Ebbe

Cheer leader for deep sea research in biology

Dr Brigitte Ebbe studied biology upto the doctoral level at the University of Hamburg. Later, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Woodshole, Massachussetts. Her area of expertise is in the polychaetes of the deep sea. She is the Scientific Project Manager for the Census of Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life (CeDAMar) Project and is also the Education and Outreach Officer for CeDAMar's Outreach and Education initiatives at the Deutsches Zentrum für Marine Biodiversitätsforschung, Senckenberg, Germany. Dr Brigitte Ebbe is an important member of Prof Dr Angelika Brandt's core team that explored the Weddell sea floor through Project ANDEEP.

In this interview Dr Brigitte Ebbe shares some interesting glimpses of what a deep sea biologist's life is like.

It would be nice to know more about your special role in the ANDEEP project?

When I started to think about this project, we really came from two sides on this project. On one side were the researchers with expertise in the polar regions. On the other side were the deep sea biologists.

I really have a lot of experience in the deep sea and have been working for 15 years researching the marine fauna of the deep sea. I have the ability to compare and correlate whatever results we expected with my earlier experiences in the deep sea and other areas, so we could pool our experiences to arrive at a better understanding and identification of the different species.

The second part of my special role in the ANDEEP project relates to this animal group that I am working with, which is polychaetes.

Euphrosine is a polychaete belonging to the family Euphrosinidae which turned out to be quite abundant in the deep Southern Ocean.
They are motile, crawl about the sediment surface and are most likely predators.

Asbestopluma

Asbestopluma is a carnivorous sponge. These unusual sponges are quite diverse in the deep Southern Ocean. Unlike "normal" sponges that feed on very fine particles, these sponges have a "mouth" to engulf whole small crustaceans. They are, however, only a few millimetres across.

Polychaetes are just as important as the crustaceans because they normally make up about half of the entire macrofauna. Basically, whenever you take a sample anywhere from the sea floor at least half of all the samples will be polychaetes.

One of the questions we had been asking when we started ANDEEP is whether the animals in the deep sea would show endemism as compared to theAntarctic shelf.

Waldecki

The polychaetes were particularly interesting because they have larvae so they can disperse overwide areas. They can basically disperse with the deep sea water. You can even find some species in the Equator. Indeed, we did find some species that exist on both sides of the Antarctic.

Some of them are distributed from pole to pole. That was an interesting fact. There are of course, a lot of species that are known only in the Antarctic deep sea. They do not show any particular morphological specialties. You would not be able to tell by it's morphology where they are from.

Tryphosella

This picture and the one above are pictures of amphipods that we were able to keep alive in our aquarium.

Please tell us more about the two Compendiums of books that have been brought out by your centre and your role in popularizing understanding on the biodiversity of the Wedell deep sea?

There have been two. One of them is on ANDEEP, our Antarctic Project. It is directed towards fellow scientists. It is not really meant for the general public. It is meant to inform our fellow scientists about what we have seen.

The second volume is on a different project. That is also part of COML (Census of Marine Life). It's called Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic (EBA). It's really a companion project. It compares deep sea stations in the Eastern Antarctic.

Eventually, we want to have a transit, so that we can compare the fauna in deep sea basins from the Arctic to the Antarctic. We want to see how the deep sea fauna changes and how different the communities are.

The general public plays a very important role. My role in CeDAMaR is in Education and Outreach. We want to make the public aware about the oceans, about how interesting they are and how little we know about them. I am trying to share with the general public the excitement of deep sea biology and of being a deep sea biologist.

We are trying to publish articles in journals that the general public is reading. Whenever there's an expedition going on that is part of CeDAMaR, we are publishing a daily log in the website of CeDAMaR so that people can look over their shoulders while we are working. That has been very well received. We write our reports in the evening and then send it off. People can then read what we've posted immediately.

It's so fascinating to explore the world of a deep sea biologist. I believe you and your team have made some films on ANDEEP expeditions. What's a typical day on the icebreaker Polarstern like? Would you please share your experiences?

Well, we have two kinds of films. One is a film about the daily life on board a research vessel. The other film shows little scenes from the deep sea floor. The one that tells about life on board a research vessel shows us working with heavy gear. When we go on an expedition each of us gets a big set of warm clothes. Some of the clothes are too warm. The temperature is between 0 degrees Centigrade and 10 degrees Centigrade. The air is so dry that you don't feel the cold so much.

This is a picture of the icebreaker - Polarstern

It's unusually hard work for most of us because usually we sit at the computers and microscopes and we don't move around much. Being on an expedition involves a lot of physical work - as in when we have to send the sampling gear down.

Sleep becomes a rare commodity. You can see in the emails that we write home mentioning the lack of sleep. An expedition typically lasts quite long - for 10-12 weeks. You stay in a small cabin of about 95 sq meters with a companion so that are you never alone during the entire expedition.

Here, you can see me in the lab

Of course, it is really exciting. Every day is an adventure. Whenever a piece of gear comes up with a sample, you can be sure that half the animals that come up, no one has ever seen them before. Because we work in the deep sea, it takes a long time for the gear to come back with a sample. We wait for a long time and then everyone gets excited when we get a sample back on board.

The other films that we have are of the ocean floor. They are mostly for the scientists because we want to get an impression of what the sea floor looks like. The camera is our extended eye. It shows us where to lower our gear. Usually when you go to the deep sea ocean floor, it's more or less homogeneous fine mud.

However, one of the things special to the deep sea Antarctic are the dropstones. Dropstones are rocks that drop from melting icebergs. These stones can destroy the sampling gear if they are big enough. That's one reason why we carry the camera down to the sea floor.

With the cameras, we can also see what the animal community looks like in situ. Most of the animals are very small but we did see some of the larger animals like sponges, star fish and sea cucumbers.

It would also be nice to know if you plan to create an on line gallery and a database that showcases the biodiversity of the new species discovered in the ANDEEP project as well as other species of marine life in the surface waters of Antarctica?

Well, we are working on a gallery. There will be one on the CeDAMaR site that we are redesigning. There is another fellow project - that is part of the International Polar Year. It is called Census of Antarctic Marine Life or CAML. It deals with the entire Southern Ocean. We are in the process of creating a very big picture gallery.

Starfish

About this species on your left, we haven't been able to identify it as yet. I believe it is a cidaroid sea urchin with some kind of a parasite on it (that's the reddish part that you can see in the picture).

That will be available soon. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Marine Biodiversity Information Network SCAR MarBIN have a fairly extensive gallery already on their website. You can see it here at http://www.scarmarbin.be/photo_gallery.php.

Each of the Center's Projects has it's own education and outreach team. The biggest legacy of the entire team really will be the database – OBIS or Ocean Biogeographic Information Sysem which will have worldwide records of marine species. It will be freely accessible to everybody. That will last beyond the duration of this project which will end in 2010. Then, everybody will be able to access OBIS and search for species or click on a map to see the list of the species that can be found there.

glass sponge

We are also continuously publishing in newspapers and besides this there are newsletters that we do for the different projects. The COML newsletter can be seen on this web portal.

We are planning a traveling exhibit which is called Deeper than Life. It has just started in Norway and then will travel all over Europe to the US. It will show animals and also some art related to or triggered by the deep sea. Everything is so beautiful in the deep sea.

One of the things we would like to get across is how beautiful life in the deep sea is. There have been several books already published which have the COML data included, though these are not published by COML. I am positive that there will be big coffee table type of books published by COML.

We are coming together in New Zealand. I am sure that when we discuss the final outcome of the project we will focus a lot on reaching out and educating the general public about our work and life in the deep sea. One of the major goals of COML is to get this knowledge out to the general public.

How does a deep sea biologist in India wanting to visit the Antarctic deep sea get started, if they want to join an ANDEEP expedition?

Well, you can always write to any of us. If they have completed graduation in biology and want to specialize in Taxonomy, we have Taxonomy Exchange Programs. We want young people to get interested in identifying animals. We have a real gap now coming in the knowledge to identify species. One of the goals of COML is to close this gap because otherwise ten years from now, there will be nobody left who will be able to identify the marine animals of the deep sea. So, there are Taxonomy Exchange Programs for students which includes a small amount of money that will take care of the daily needs of the students.

If somebody from India would like to participate in any of these programs, just write to any of the Education and Outreach people of the program. The best way to get there is to visit the COML portal and explore all the different projects.

A chinstrap penguin with a colleague, Dr. Wiebke Broekeland from the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research

Tell us about some of the most memorable moments of your research?

I love this photograph!

Wouldn't you agree it's quite a picturesque reflection of an iceberg in the water

That's very difficult because there are so many of them. For me, personally it was when we went to the South Sandwich trench which is in the eastern side of the Weddell sea. It was over 6000 meters deep. It was one of our deepest sites.

When we went there and lowered our piece of gear, we knew that nobody had ever been there before. It was a wide area on the map. It was an exciting feeling to know that you are definitely the first person to look there. I think that was one of the most memorable moments.

Another incident that comes to my mind was when we used the camera to photograph the ocean floor. The camera was approved to take pictures only unto a depth of 5000 meters. We really wanted to see pictures there.

Images of the Weddel sea floor

The person who was in charge of the camera, who was handling the camera said, "I am going to try and see if it's possible to take some photographs of the sea floor". We got the camera back in one piece and with lots of great pictures. It was amazing! We had pictures from depths that we had never seen before. That was very exciting!

Tell us about your family and how do you like to spend your free time?

When I get some free time I like to have the other half of my brain working. I sing in a chorus group, in classical music and also sing in the opera as a soloist, just for fun.

I am singing in two church choir groups - one is a very small one with 15 or 20 singers and the other is a big one where we are singing a big classical work of church music.

I love to work in my little garden. It is one of the most relaxing things to do. It's nice to get there and weed and watch everything flower.

My family is very small. It just consists of my husband. He has a son from his first marriage who comes to see us often. We used to have until three weeks ago two cats. Unfortunately they were old and they died, both within two and a half months of one another. It was very sad but at least they got to live long, and I would think happy lives. It's very empty in the house. We are missing them very much. We are looking to adopt another pair of kittens.

Thank you very much Dr Brigitte Ebbe for sparing your valuable time for an inteview.

Photo credits :
Two amphipods, kept alive in aquaria on board for the duration of the expedition - copyright Claude De Broyer/CeDAMar

A chinstrap penguin with a colleague, Dr. Wiebke Broekeland from the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research - copyright - CeDAMar

Reflected icebergs - copyright Brigitte Ebbe/CeDAMar

Photographs of the deep sea floor - copyright - Prof Bob Diaz

All other images are copyright - CeDAMar