Biologist Plumbs Ocean Depths in Quest for New Forms of Life

Biologist Chuck Fisher's research takes him all over the world and to the bottom of the ocean with regularity.  Among his many accomplishments have been the discovery of "ice worms" that live at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on methane-rich ice, and the discovery that some of the tube worms he studies are the longest-living invertebrates in the world. While certain discoveries, such as the ice worms, truly thrill Fisher — "a whole new habitat, a whole new place where animals abound and nobody thought it was possible" — he gets enthused about almost everything he does. He passes that enthusiasm along in many ways.

From the Research and Education: Volcanoes Exploration and Life (REVEL) program, designed to provide experiences at sea for middle-school and high-school teachers, to his busy on-campus lab, he impacts everyone from other researchers to undergraduate students.

Even without waterfront property, Penn State has proven to be a nice home for Fisher, his family, and his research. "Everything I do requires a ship and a submarine or remote vehicle," Fisher says.  "There's nothing I can do by walking off the beach. Most of all, you need understanding administrators and quality labs on campus. We have all of that here at Penn State."

"There are reasons animals survive, even thrive, in extreme environments.  We can apply what we find out about them to other research areas and learn things that might directly help the human race." — Charles Fisher, Eberly College of Science

The Research and Education: Volcanoes, Exploration, and Life (REVEL) program represents a collaboration between Penn State, the University of Washington, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. During the past several years, teachers from New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington have participated along with  multi-institutional scientific groups studying active volcanoes and hydrothermal vents located more than a mile below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Some expeditions used a three-seat submarine and others used remotely operated vehicles to assist with their research. As part of that program and numerous other research efforts, Fisher has made 74 deep-sea dives and operated remote vehicles for 54 other dives.

With faculty members in seven departments and 18 different research consortiums and research groups on campus, the Eberly College of Science at Penn State ranks among the nation's leaders in public research. During the 1998-1999 fiscal year, research expenditures from external grants and contracts totaled $38.2 million, putting the Eberly College of Science among the nation's leaders.

Along with that research, in field and laboratory settings with professors such as Chuck Fisher, Penn State provides students with an opportunity to learn directly from researchers. In addition to classroom studies, more than one-third of juniors and seniors in the college participate in research programs in a corporate cooperative-education setting or with Penn State faculty members like Fisher. For more information about the college, visit it on-line at http://www.science.psu.edu

For more information on Chuck Fisher's research, send an e-mail note to science@psu.edu