She has worked in the Arctic for the past 15 years and has spent over a year combined sea time. Her primary interests are in benthic and sea ice ecology, biodiversity, food webs, population dynamics and ice-pelagic-benthic coupling. During the RUSALCA 2012 cruise, Dr. Bluhm will work on the epibenthic community structure and food web with her colleague Dr. Iken and graduate student Lauren Bell. For that purpose, the team will quantify and identify the invertebrate fauna from the beam trawl hauls, and collect pelagic and benthic invertebrates from various gears for biochemical analysis of the tissue composition indicative of trophic levels and food sources.