Dr. Ryota Nakajima

A biological oceanographer

About me

Ryota Nakajima, PhD

A biological oceanographer
Ryota is a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego. His major interests are the ecology and conservation of the deep-sea and coral reef. Ryota is a member of the Smith Lab. Click here to check out his biography!
 

(for Japanese, click 日本語)

Research Projects

Some of my recent work.

The role of coral mucus

Deep-sea conservation

Check the research blog page!

Click Here!

Activities

Things that I work on.

Research projects

My major interests are the ecology of coral reef, the deep-sea and the Amazon River.

Scientific publications

It ain't over till it gets published...

Grant

My research grant history...

Quotes

Here's my favorite phrase.

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
Steve Jobs, Apple
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."
Bill Gates, Microsoft
"I've actually not read any books on time management."
Elon Musk, Tesla Motors

Research Blog

Check the previous research achievements!

High fish abundance in the confluence of two large rivers in the Amazon

- 06/03/2017

Ryota and his team report a high fish larvae abundance in the confluence zone between black and white water rivers in the Amazon River system. In the center of the Amazon River basin, white water of the Amazon River meets with black water of the Negro River, creating a conspicuous visible boundary spanning over 10 km along […]

Zooplankton community changes over monsoons

- 03/31/2017

Ryota and his colleagues investigated zooplankton community in a coral reef of Malaysia . The research team collected copepods with a plankton net over different monsoonal periods. They found that more than 70% of the community was dominated by small copepods throughout the year, and the species composition varied with seasonal monsoons. The research team considers that differences […]

Sea-surface microlayer is rich in microbes over coral reefs

- 03/31/2017

Do you know the sea-surface microlayer? The sea-surface microlayer is the thin boundary layer between the atomosphere and ocean, with a typical thickness of 10-250 µm. It is also called ‘surface film’ or ‘surface skin’. The sea-surface micolayer is generally enriched in both dissolved and particulate organic matters and microbes. The sea-surface microlayer can be […]

What happens after drilling the deep-sea floor?

- 03/23/2017

Ryota and his team monitored the benthic ecosystem at 1,060 m depth of hydrothermally active areas in the Okinawa Trough, off Japan, where a scientific drilling by the Deep Sea Scientific Drilling Vessel Chikyu was performed on September 2010. This monitoring was started before the drilling operation and lasted 40 months thereafter. As a result, it […]

Typhoon enhances the production of bacteria and phytoplankton

- 03/13/2017

Kenji Tsuchiya and his colleagues investigated responses of bacteria and phytoplankton to physical-chemical environments induced by typhoon passages. The study showed that the passage of typhoon Malou in a coastal water of Japan in 2010 caused an abrupt decline of salinity and a large increase in the amount of nutrients, immediately enhancing bacterial production. The study also sowed that […]

The first multi-hectare scale 3D survey of a deep-sea vent community

- 03/13/2017

Blair Thornton and his colleagues investigated the distribution of megabenthos over multi-hectare regions (2.5 ha) of the seafloor of a deep-sea hydrothermal vent site off Japan for the first time. The study region was the target of scientific drilling during the IODP Expedition 331 in 2010. The research team surveyed biomass of megabenthos using high- and […]

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