Erik received his M.S. from Moss Landing Marine Labs, was a Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar during his Ph.D. work at Penn State University, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. He has worked on the ecology of the deep sea for over 20 years, spending over a year at sea on over 25 research cruises and making over 35 dives in the manned submersibles Alvin and Johnson Sea-Link. The research in his lab is centered around the ability of organisms to shape their environment and increase habitat heterogeneity, but has increasingly become focused on the ability for humans to impact these processes in the deep sea.