Tania Smith

I graduated from the School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOCS) in 2000 with a BSc (Hons) in Oceanography with Marine Biology. I took a year out during my degree to work at an aquaculture farm in Southern Portugal. This helped me secure a job as a plankton ecologist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory. I gained lots of experience in the four years working there, both in the laboratory and on various research cruises. It also gave me a good knowledge of upper water column ecosystem dynamics.

I completed my PhD in March 2008 within the DEEPSEAS group, supervised by Dr David Billett, Prof. George Wolff (University of Liverpool) and Prof. Paul Tyler. My PhD entitled ‘Sexual Biochemistry in the Deep Sea: The Link between Phytoplankton and Abyssal Holothurians’ examined the nutritional link between diet and reproduction in the deep sea. This involved a temporal study at the Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP), NE Atlantic, and a spatial study around the Crozet Islands, Southern Ocean. My results showed that changes in the composition and quantity of the supply of organic matter to the deep-sea floor can affect holothurian diet and ovarian biochemistry. This may lead to large community changes as seen at the PAP, which alters the reworking rate of the sediment, ultimately affecting the sequestration of carbon.

After completing my PhD, I was employed to write a review of the existing and potential environmental indicators for monitoring and assessing the state of UK deep-sea habitats. The indicators were reviewed against potential anthropogenic pressures, ecosystem structure and function, as well as statutory obligations and Contributory Marine Objectives. The review will be used by JNCC in developing the UK Marine Monitoring and Assessment Framework.

I was then employed by the DEEPSEAS group as the BIOCEAN database manager and HERMES biological data manager. The aim of the role was to install the BIOCEAN database created by IFREMER that will be used to hold the extremely large volumes of data collected and generated from deep-sea ecosystem research cruises by the DEEPSEAS team at NOCS and from the European HERMES partners. Data from the DEEPSEAS group and HERMES were collated and processed into a standardised format ready to upload into the database. The core database was successfully installed at the NOCS. The software used to access and manage the data is currently being modified to work with the NOCS system.

I am currently working at Queen Mary University London, on a three year NERC project, with Andrew Hirst (QMU) and Cathy Lucas (NOC). The project aims to explain why there are high female to male sex ratios in some species of copepods. Previous studies have theorised that predation and/or differences in physiological longevity are the cause. It is important to determine the factors that can affect sex ratio in adult copepods, because sperm limitation due to high female to male sex ratio can control population growth when food (phytoplankton) abundance is high. This has implications for higher trophic levels (such as commercial fish) that rely on copepods for food. The project will involve a lot of field and experimental work, which will utilise the skills I gained at PML as a plankton ecologist.