Coral Diaz

Coral Diaz Recio Lorenzo Diversity and connectivity of fauna from deep-sea hydrothermal vents on geographical and temporal scales. or Diversity and connectivity of animals in the deep sea through space and time

Coral is working with DNA from animals living in extreme environments, like hydrothermal vents (deep-sea underwater volcanoes). With that DNA, Coral is studying how individuals differ between populations of the same species or between different species. She examines this on a geographical scale, observing how different animals vary based on their distance from each other, and also over time, noting how they change as the years pass. Coral does that in order to understand how well connected those populations are. That connectivity is something that they use to understand how the complex and dynamic seascape can influence the degree of genetic exchange. With the results of this work, Coral can then quantify the risk posed to individuals of the same or closely related species and then the overall risk imposed on these communities, populations, should deep-sea mining occur. Coral looks at how well connected on a natural level they are, when there is no type of disruption, except the natural one (earthquake/volcanic eruption). But they also try to understand what that would look like, if a mining company were to remove habitat: will it recover, and if so, how long will it take if connectivity is low?

Why this subject ?

Coral thinks the subject has chosen her. She started this journey of research 10 years ago when she was doing her bachelor's degree. She became really passionate about the deep sea and the deep sea as an extreme environment and how intensely and specifically animals had adapted to high temperatures and toxic metals. Now she focuses on integrating methods in genomics and larval dispersal modelling to understand how animals move through dynamic ocean currents and find their way back to a rare, deep-sea environment: hydrothermal vents.

While coastal ecology and evolution is a fast-growing field, the deep-sea is a difficult environment to sample from and therefore remains behind in global research into conservation, despite increasing interest in mineral resource extraction from hydrothermal vents. Within increasing risk of local extinction should mining occur, there is a need to understand how we can best protect these environments and the animals that depend on them. 

A funny story related to this subject ?

Last year Coral went on the BICOSE 3 cruise and at the very end she was extremely lucky and got to dive with the Nautile. It was her first dive ever, and together with the pilots, had a picnic at 1000 m depth!