Cindy Lee Van Dover

Cindy Lee Van Dover (born May 16, 1954) is an American marine biologist, deep-sea explorer, professor of biological oceanography, and leading expert on biodiversity and biogeography of hydrothermal vent invertebrates. She was the pilot-in-command for 48 dives of DSV Alvin. She was appointed the 2000 Rachel Carson Lecturer of the American Geophysical Union and was elected in 2001 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Quotes

• Deep-sea hydrothermal vents and their attendant faunas were discovered in 1977. While the hot-water springs were predicted to occur at seafloor spreading centers, no one expected to find them colonized by exotic invertebrate faunas. Accustomed to a view of the deep sea as a food-limited environment, the puzzle of how lush communities could be maintained provoked biologists into a flurry of research activity. ...
  As field programs multiplied and more vent communities were discovered, biogeographic patterns in the distribution of faunas became apparent and ecological issues of habitat requirements, dispersal, and population genetics began to be addressed. New chemosynthetic faunas were discovered associated with diverse settings, from brine and hydrocarbon seeps to whale skeletons. Massive bacterial blooms triggered by the release of nutrients during a volcanic eruption, rapid colonization of new vents by invertebrates, and burial of extant vent communities by lava flows demonstrate the dynamic nature of hydrothermal systems. Perhaps the most provocative consequence of the discovery of seafloor hydrothermal vents is the suggestion that these vents may have been the site where life originated.
  • "Preface". The Ecology of Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents. Princeton paperbacks. Princeton University Press. 2000. pp. xvii–xviii. ISBN 9780691049298.  (424 pages; quote from p. xvii)

• You can go for hundreds of meters along the deep-sea floor and see nothing. But then you’ll get to a vent and it will be a garden of exotic creatures. The vents are like the geysers in Yellowstone. The seawater percolates down through cracks caused by earthquakes, and then it comes up through these underwater chimneys. There are lots of ores there like copper, gold, silver, zinc and minerals. There’s so much life there, and it’s very different from what we’re used to seeing. Whenever scientists go down, we almost always find new creatures.
  • as quoted by Claudia Dreyfus in: (October 16, 2007) "Deep in the Sea, Imagining the Cradle of Life on Earth (A conversation with Cindy Lee Van Dover)". The New York Times.

• Scientific exploration of the deep sea in the late 1970s led to the discovery of seafloor massive sulphide at hydrothermal vents. More recently, sulphide deposits containing high grades of ore have been discovered in the southwest Pacific. In addition to metal-rich ores, hydrothermal vents host ecosystems based on microbial chemoautotrophic primary production, with endemic invertebrate species adapted in special ways to the vent environment. Although there has been considerable effort to study the biology and ecology of vent systems in the decades since these systems were first discovered, there has been limited attention paid to conservation issues. Three priority recommendations for conservation science at hydrothermal vent settings are identified here: (i) determine the natural conservation units for key species with differing life histories; (ii) identify a set of first principles for the design of preservation reference areas and conservation areas; (iii) develop and test methods for effective mitigation and restoration to enhance the recovery of biodiversity in sulphide systems that may be subject to open-cut mining.
  • (January 2011) "Mining seafloor massive sulphides and biodiversity: What is at risk?". ICES Journal of Marine Science 68 (2): 341–348. DOI:10.1093/icesjms/fsq086.

• Deep-sea hydrothermal-vent ecosystems have stimulated decades of scientific research and hold promise of mineral and genetic resources that also serve societal needs. Some endemic taxa thrive only in vent environments, and vent-associated organisms are adapted to a variety of natural disturbances, from tidal variations to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In this paper, physicochemical and biological impacts of a range of human activities at vents are considered. Mining is currently the only anthropogenic activity projected to have a major impact on vent ecosystems, albeit at a local scale, based on our current understanding of ecological responses to disturbance. Natural recovery from a single mining event depends on immigration and larval recruitment and colonization; understanding processes and dynamics influencing life-history stages may be a key to effective minimization and mitigation of mining impacts. Cumulative impacts on benthic communities of several mining projects in a single region, without proper management, include possible species extinctions and shifts in community structure and function.
  • (December 2014) "Impacts of anthropogenic disturbances at deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems: A review". Marine Environmental Research 102: 59–72. DOI:10.1016/j.marenvres.2014.03.008.

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Cindy Lee Van Dover on Wikipedia
• Beyond the edge of the sea | Cindy Lee Van Dover. TED Archive, YouTube (December 5, 2017).(video recording of 2015 talk)