Woods Hole Research - Hugh W Ducklow

Groups

Woods Hole Scientific Community
- Marine Biological Laboratory
  - MBL Ecosystems Center – Director and Senior Scientist

Research Focus

I am a biological oceanographer and have been studying the dynamics of plankton foodwebs in estuaries, the coastal ocean and the open sea since 1980. My students and I have worked principally on microbial foodwebs and the role of heterotrophic bacteria in the marine carbon cycle. I have participated in oceanographic cruises in Chesapeake Bay, the western North Atlantic Ocean, the Bermuda and Hawaii Time Series stations, the Black Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Ross Sea, the Southern Ocean, the Equatorial Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef. Much of the work was done in the decade-long Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), which I led in the late 1990s. Currently I lead the Palmer Antarctica Long Term Ecological Research Project on the west Antarctic Peninsula, where we’re investigating the responses of the marine ecosystem to rapid climate warming. Although our research is primarily experimental and observational, we utilize mathematical models and collaborate with modelers to gain deeper understanding and derive maximum benefit from the data we collect. In collaboration with Dr. Alison Murray, we also have an International Polar Year (IPY) project to examine the structure of Antarctic marine bacterial communities and their adaptations to the Austral winter.