Eastern premise

At least Tony Rice is apologetic about his acronym. And who could claim they would devise a better one, faced with the project title: High Resolution Temporal and Spatial Study of the Benthic Biology and Geochemistry of a North Eastern Atlantic Abyssal Locality. "I only had an hour and I knew it was awful when I came up with it," says Dr Rice, of the Southampton Oceanography Centre. Still, he went ahead and christened it "Bengal" (yes, the letters are there if you search for them). And when he writes, as project head, to each of the 17 project partners around Europe he addresses them, "Dear Bengali".