Marine biology is the study of all the living things that live in the sea, from the tiniest viruses to huge whales and everything in between. We have several marine biologists working on the programme, who will be investigating the different organisms that inhabit the same environment as the coelacanths; some of them may play an important role in the lives of coelacanths (like their prey and any potential predators) whilst others may not be as important to them. Ultimately, however, most organisms are interconnected through food webs. Ecology is the study of the interactions of organisms to both their physical habitat, and to other species and individuals around them. Marine ecology is the study of the interactions between the various species and their habitat.

This programme gives us a unique, rare and truly exciting opportunity to study an ecosystem that is very hard to study, that of deep rocky reefs. Due to the limitations of conventional sampling strategies (such as SCUBA diving and trawling) which do not work very well in deep, rugged rocky terrain, we actually know relatively little about that ecosystem. We're really excited to find out more!

Because we expect to come across new and exciting things we've never seen before, taxonomy, the identification and description of animals and plants with proper scientific ("latin") names, will be an important component.