News & Events 2002-2003

Dr. Lutz and His Voyage into the Abyss

Dr. Richard Lutz, Professor of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, spoke in Armstrong-Hipkins Center for the Arts on October 15th as part of the Society of Skeptics lecture series.

Dr. Lutz is one of the foremost authorities in the world on the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Since the first biological expedition to these unique ecosystems in 1979, Dr. Lutz has spent countless hours on the bottom exploring thermal vents throughout the world’s oceans in a variety of deep-diving submersibles.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maine in 1975 and subsequently spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. In 1979, he joined the faculty of Rutgers University, where he currently is a Professor in the Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences. He has been Chief Scientist on numerous oceanographic cruises, has over 130 publications, and was awarded the Rutgers’ Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research.

In April 1991, Dr. Lutz joined a number of his geological colleagues on an oceanographic expedition, during which they used the deep-submergence vehicle Alvin to dive, for the first time, into the caldera of an actively erupting volcanic ridge along the East Pacific rise at a depth of 2500 meters (8,600 feet). Dr. Lutz has returned to the site at approximately annual intervals to document events that have occurred since the eruption.

His highly illustrated lecture focused on spectacular biological and geological changes that have occurred since the April 1991 eruption. The exciting results of these ongoing studies have been featured in many scientific journals and magazines, including Science, Nature, two separate issues of National Geographic (the most recent being October 2000), and the October 2001 issue of American Scientist (cover story). Observations made during the course of Dr. Lutz’s ongoing studies in this unique “natural deep-sea laboratory” are dramatically altering our views of the rates at which many biological and geological processes are occurring on the face of the planet.

Dr. Lutz is currently Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation project to put together an IMAX film entitled Voyage into the Abyss, and his lecture included preliminary video footage from this upcoming film.

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