Sea of Japan Biodiversity Studies (SoJaBio)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Angelika Brandt
• Subject Area: Systematics and Morphology (Zoology)
• Term: from 2010 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 171454788

A joint Russian/German expedition (Sea of Japan Biodiversity Studies [SoJaBio]) onboard of the R/V Akademik Lavrentyev to the deep part of the Sea of Japan is planned between August-September of 2010. It will include about 12 Russian scientists mainly from the A.V. Zhirmunsky Institute of Marine Biology in Vladivostok and about the same number of German participants. The expedition is designed to study the biodiversity of organisms of all size classes in a semi-enclosed comparatively young deep-sea basin isolated from adjacent ocean deep-sea areas which is characterised by quite a high productivity and Is influenced by anthropogenic impact. The results shall be compared in future with the biodiversity of an open, non-isolated deep-sea area of the Pacific (close to the Kurile Kamchatka Trench*) and with other existing deep-sea data from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans obtained in the framework of CeDAMar (Census of the Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life) and collected with the same gears and a standardised sampling methodology. Moreover, we want to study abundance and species richness of stations on the background of distance from shore and depth, compare alpha-diversity with ß-diversity and the zoogeographic occurence of species and higher taxa with the world-wide geographic distribution on the background of the GOODS** provides.*Proposal for the RV Sonne for 2012 has been submitted by 15.10.2009.** Global Open Oceans and Deep Seabed biogeographical classification (GOODS)"(UNESCO, 2009)

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Participating Person: Dr. Marina Valentinovna Malyutina