ChEss Home

ChEss (Chemosynthitic Ecosystem Science) is a field project of the Census of Marine Life programme (CoML). The main aim of ChEss is to determine the biogeography of deep-water chemosynthetic ecosystems at a global scale and to understand the processes driving these ecosystems. ChEss addresses the main questions of CoML on diversity, abundance and distribution of marine species, focusing on deep-water reducing environments such as hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, whale falls, sunken wood and areas of low oxygen that intersect with continental margins and seamounts.

News

January 2010: ChEsSo 2: the 2nd ChEsSo cruise for exploration of hydrothermal vents south of the Polar Front is now underway on board the James Cook with the ROV Isis. Chris German is on board from ChEss. You can follow the cruise on the web: http://www.classroomatsea.net/JC042/

.November 2009: MAR-ECO announces the new Peter Boyle book: Life in the Mid Atlantic. [see more info] [for sale on Amazon]

July 2009: The ChEss special session at the 4th International Symposium on Chemosynthetic-Based Ecosystems, Okinawa, Japan was well attended and a great success. The keynote speaker was Sabine Gollner, one of the ChEss travel grant award winners and a TAWNI participant from 2006-7. [Link to meeting website for programme].

June 2009: The final ChEss SSC held on 28th June in Okinawa was well attended and most productive. Discussions were mostly based upon preparations and progress for the ChEss synthesis products. [Link to group photo].

July 2009: ChEss Co-Chair Chris German talks about the exploration of hydrothermal vents and the ChEss Programme in a two-part short video [Link to CoML video site].

June 2009: Photographic Identification Guide to Larvae at Hydrothermal Vents. This guide, co-funded by ChEss, is now available online at: http://www.whoi.edu/vent-larval-id/ or by request as a CD or hard copy. The purpose of this guide is to assist researchers in the identification of larvae of benthic invertebrates at hydrothermal vents. PDF of advertisment poster. Low resolusion PDF of printed version.

April 2009: The Handbook of Hydrothermal Vent Fauna has been sold out. There is now a link for downloading the entire book for free, subdivided into individual chapters. Follow this link to download (ensure you are in Austrian language on website): [www.biologiezentrum.at] -> Publikationen -> Denisia -> 18. For the Supplement & Corrigendum, link here.

Meetings

• IPY Oslo Science Conference Oslo, Norway 8 - 12 June 2010 [Link to website]

• 12th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium Askja, Natural Science Building, Reykjavík, Iceland. 7-11 June 2010 [Link to website]

• Workshop on ‘Meiofauna from chemosynthetic deep-sea environments’ in conjunction with the 14th International Meiofauna Conference. Ghent University 17 August 2010 [link to website]