Portsmouth scientist takes thousands of children on deep-sea adventure with Steve Backshall

University of Portsmouth deep-sea ecologist Dr Nicolai Roterman took children around the world on a journey to the ocean floor this week with explorer and Nekton ambassador Steve Backshall. 

Yesterday (22 September), he featured on the first episode of Ocean Live with Steve Backshall; a new virtual live lesson series produced by Nekton, Encounter Edu, and Children United, that hopes to engage young people aged 7 to 11 with sea exploration and expeditions.  

Dr Roterman is from the University's Institute of Marine Sciences, part of the University's School of the Environment and Life Sciences, and a member of the Ocean Census Science Network - a worldwide community of marine biologists, taxonomists, geneticists, ecologists, and conservationists working together to accelerate species discovery and expand our knowledge of ocean life.   

1436 schools tuned in to watch the first episode of Ocean Live, which was aired from DEEP Campus in Chepstow, the UK's leading underwater training and innovation centre.   

Steve presented parts of the lesson from inside a submersible, while talking about other machines associated with deep-sea research. Dr Roterman joined the science section of the show, which explored the kind of discoveries that can be made in the ocean.  

He spoke about his research on the "Hoff Crab"; a type of deep-sea crustacean which lives in vast communities around hot vents on the seafloor in Antarctica. The species is actually called Kiwa tyleri, but was nicknamed after the US actor David Hasselhoff by Dr Roterman when he discovered it in 2010, because of its perfusion of hair-like structures, called setae, on their ‘chests’.  

Dr Roterman’s work has taken him to depths of just under 3,500 metres (11,482ft), in a government-owned Japanese submersible called Shinkai 6500, to explore hydrothermal vents on the seabed. 

Speaking about his time exploring the deep-sea, he told Steve: "You're seeing things that no human being has ever seen in parts of the world no human being has ever been. And you see incredible sights, like organisms that give off light, bioluminescence, like a Christmas tree in the darkness."

The live lesson featured quizzes, classroom resources and activities, interactions and loads more for parents, teachers and students to engage with. Dr Roterman also answered questions from schoolchildren, including: "Where do you go to the toilet on a submersible like this?", to which he replied, "There's nowhere to go to the toilet, so when we went on the Shinkai we weren't allowed to drink for 12 hours beforehand!" 

Speaking after the live lesson, Dr Roterman said: “The deep sea is one of the last great unknowns on our planet, and I get to spend my career discovering the creatures that live there - like the Hoff Crab. Being able to share that sense of discovery directly with children and show them that this is a real job real scientists do, is exactly why events like this matter.” 

The first episode of Ocean Live with Steve Backshall is now available on demand for anyone who missed it: www.kidsnewsworld.com/video/ocean-live-with-steve-backshall-on-demand