Lyndell M. Bade

Lyndell is currently finishing her M.Sc. in Biology, for which she uses genetic techniques to investigate the feeding ecology of cownose rays in North Carolina and Chesapeake Bay.  Lyndell hasn’t always studied biology, however.  She earned her B.A. in History and Theatre at Butler University, where she wrote her honors thesis on William Wallace (the medieval Scottish patriot made more recently famous by Braveheart) and fell in love with Shakespeare.  After her undergraduate degree, she moved to Guam, studied Micronesian culture, and learned to SCUBA dive.  She spent 20 years studying ballet and has a previous life working in museums, education, and non-profit/arts administration.

Lyndell’s interest in marine biology originated when she lived in Australia as a teenager, and spent hours scouring the rock pools on the bay across the road from her house.  Many years later, while diving in Palau, she came head to head with her first grey reef shark, and her life has never been the same since.  She went back to school to study ecology and conservation biology at University of Missouri-St Louis.  Her work in the Missouri-Science Teaching & Education Partnership (NSF GK-12) program at UMSL introduced her to the world of avian reproductive ecology and experiential education with high school students.  That work lead to a stint in the Galapagos Islands, where she lived on uninhabited islands, censused endemic Galapagos Hawk populations, and SCUBA dived with her first manta ray.

Combining her love of teaching science, her inter-disciplinary perspective, and artistic nature, Lyndell started blogging under Save-Our-Sharks and People Policy Planet.  Graduate school has since eaten up most of her time, and so she is thrilled to be joining Southern Fried Science as a contributor.  You can find Lyndell on twitter: @lyndellmbade and Google+.