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SEAS: Student Experiments At Sea

Larval ecology of deep-sea mussels

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Shawn Arellano in her lab, microscope in the background

Shawn Arellano

Shawn is a PhD candidate at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, a campus of the University of Oregon. Shawn is studying larval ecology of deep-sea organisms. In particular, she's working with the seep mussels, Bathymodiolis childressi, found in the Gulf of Mexico. She is interested in finding out if the mussel larvae (i.e., babies) live only in the deep-sea or if they can live and feed in surface waters. She wants to know how far they can go.