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Professor of Oceanography
Integrative Oceanography Division

Michael Landry is a Distinguished Professor of Oceanography in the Biological Oceanography curriculum group at SIO, which is part of the Ocean Biology Program (OBP).  His research is administered through the Integrative Oceanography Division in the Biology Section.

Landry’s research focuses on plankton food web ecology, specifically the complex interactions of bacteria, phytoplankton, protozoa and small metazoans at the base of ocean food webs, and the effects of physical, chemical and climate influences on the organization and dynamics of those assemblages.  Much of this research is based on shipboard studies, which have applied experimental techniques for measuring production, growth and grazing rates in a variety of ocean ecosystems — the equatorial, subtropical and subarctic Pacific, the Arabian Sea, the Southern Ocean, and coastal waters of Washington, Oregon and California, as well as systems perturbed by natural physical disturbances (eddies and fronts) or designed manipulation (iron fertilization).  Current active projects include: 1) documenting long-term changes in phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass and composition in the central subtropical Pacific as part of the Hawaii Ocean Times series (HOT; http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot) Program; 2) assessing effects of ocean frontal systems on plankton productivity, food-web structure and dynamics in the California Current Ecosystem as part of the CCE-LTER (http://cce.lternet.edu) Program; 3) investigating plankton community interactions and trace-element limitation in the Costa Rica Dome ecosystem; 4) using compound-specific stable isotope techniques to compare trophic structures and test fisheries models in the equatorial and subtropical Pacific and California upwelling region; and 5) developing stable isotope techniques to resolve the trophic steps of protozoans.

Landry was born in Berlin, New Hampshire, but moved west with his family at the age of 11 to southern California.  He earned a B.A. in Environmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Washington, and later an M.B.A. in Finance and Operations Management from the University of Washington.  Following a postdoc in the Food Chain Research Group at Scripps in the mid-1970s, he went on to research positions at the University of Washington and professor and department chair appointments at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa before returning to Scripps in 2003.

Landry is author/co-author of >170 scientific articles in his research specialty areas.  He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the Oceanography Society (TOS), and the World Association of Copepodologists (WAC).  He serves on the editorial boards of Limnology and Oceanography, Ecosystems, and Marine Ecology Progress Series and is co-editor of the book Coastal Oceanography of Washington and Oregon.

Last updated February 2013