Guest Writer

Help crowdfund shark research: Quick(silver?) stingrays

June 10, 2016June 10, 2016 Guest Writer

Science

Kady Lyons is a Ph.D. candidate whose research focuses on the intersection of physiology, ecology and toxicology. Her Master’s at Cal State Long Beach with Dr. Chris Lowe got her involved in elasmobranch toxicology. She is interested in how elasmobranchs respond to anthropogenic contaminants and how contaminants can be used as another tool to study ecology. Currently, her Ph.D. is examining how accumulation of these man-made contaminants influences round stingray growth and reproduction. As part of her Master’s work, she began to investigate mercury accumulation and body distribution of mercury, a potent neurotoxin, in elasmobranchs using the round stingray as a model species. She is continuing to work on this project and will be raising funds to finish this research as part of The Experiment’s Sharks Grant Challenge beginning June 8th and running through the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

Mercury concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere have significantly increased with human activities such as mining and fossil fuel burning. Mercury can be transformed into its more dangerous form (methylmercury) and this form is what becomes concentrated in animals’ tissues. For animals that occupy higher positions in the food web such as elasmobranchs (sharks, skates and rays), mercury can bioaccumulate to high levels due to their long life and carnivorous behavior.

Introducing Field School: A Resource for Marine Science Research and Education

May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 Guest Writer

Conservation, Education, Science

Julia Wester is the Director of Program Development for Field School. She received her PhD from the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami in 2016. Her dissertation studied the psychology of decision making about the environment, specifically with regard to limited water resources. She also received a Msc with Distinction in Biodiversity Conservation and Management from Oxford University and worked as a Legislative Aide in South Florida, focusing on environmental policy. She has consulted with nonprofit programs to evaluate their educational programs and assisted with training staff to conduct effective public outreach.

The folks at Southern Fried Science, as part of their commitment to research and education, have generously given us this platform to talk about our educational start-up, Field School. (Thanks, SFS!). They’ve also been kind enough to get excited about working with us to develop and test new research techniques, study awesome animals and ecosystems, and improve marine science field education—so stay tuned for some of those upcoming collaborations!

What is field school?

Field School is a hybrid company on a mission to support field research in marine and environmental science, and create high-quality educational and training opportunities for students and the public. We offer hands-on, research focused courses on a variety of topics, from corals to sharks, on our 55’ custom live-aboard research vessel.

Field School offers researchers and students opportunities to engage with and study tropical marine ecosystems. Photo credit: Kristine Stump

Part of what makes Field School special is the team we’ve brought together. Our captain and crew all have doctoral and/or masters degrees in marine or environmental science, have authored numerous scientific publications, and have a combined 25 years of experience in field education and outreach. We have developed short- and long-term training and mentoring opportunities for students, teach highly reviewed and award-winning university courses, and work with partner non-profits to create outreach programs for the public. We collaborate closely with our scientific advisory board and partner universities to develop the conservation and research projects our students work on, ensuring their time in our courses is professionally relevant and meaningful.

Big ideas and little robots: Using the OpenROV in interdisciplinary STEM projects

May 4, 2016May 3, 2016 Guest Writer 1 Comment

Conservation, Education, Science

Joey Maier is a biology professor at Polk State College where he uses every possible opportunity to encourage his students to spend time in the water, play with technology, and do #CitizenScience. As an undergraduate, he did a stint as an intern for Mark Xitco and John Gory during their dolphin language experiments. He then spent the years of his M.Sc. at the University of Oklahoma thawing out and playing with bits of decaying dolphin. After discovering that computers lack that rotten-blubber smell, Joey became a UNIX sysadmin and later a CISSP security analyst.

While his pirate game is weak, he is often seen with a miniature macaw on his shoulder. His spare time is spent SCUBA diving and trying to hang out with people who have submersibles. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

There’s a Klingon bird of prey hanging from the ceiling in my office.

I may teach biology, but at heart I’m a sci-fi nerd. Naturally, I’m interested in futurism, robots, lasers and all manner of techy paraphernalia. I’d been watching the OpenROV project for a while, but hadn’t gotten one yet. They were obviously awesome little machines that gave me a serious case of gadget envy, and I knew that some of our students would love to pilot an ROV. I needed a much better reason than that, however, to justify getting one. There’s no line item in our budget for, “Wow, that’s cool!” and I was fairly certain that the college administration would tend to favor lower cost and more familiar forms of student engagement

This tweet changed everything. When I found out that Andrew had designed a mini-Niskin bottle, the wheels in my head started turning. Assembling an OpenROV would, naturally, be a very STEM-oriented project. The times our students piloted the ROV could become water sampling field trips, and the kids could analyze their samples back at school as a laboratory activity. If students recorded the process, they could make a short film. I mulled over the possibilities and bounced ideas off of my dive buddies during the hours we spent traveling to and from the coast.

Shark MOOC: There’s a big shark party, and you’re invited!

February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 Guest Writer

Education, Science

William E Bemis is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell and lead faculty member for the edX MOOC Sharks! Global Biodiversity, Biology, and Conservation. He studied at Cornell University, the University of Michigan, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Chicago before serving 20 years as Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 2005 to 2013, he served as Kingsbury Director of Shoals Marine Laboratory at Cornell. Bemis conducts research in comparative vertebrate anatomy, trains research students, and teaches courses in vertebrate anatomy and evolution.

How do you get thousands of people interested in basic biological concepts? By teaching a course on some of the most fascinating animals on Earth – sharks and their relatives.
This is a particularly exciting time to be a shark scientist. An explosion of new research methods and technologies are leading to a surprising world of discovery. Our new course, free and open to anyone in the world, explores discoveries in many areas, including:

Making your scientific outreach go further

February 3, 2016February 4, 2016 Guest Writer

Uncategorized

Catherine Macdonald is the Executive Director of Field School, an interdisciplinary field science training program. She is also a fifth year PhD student at the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami, and the Intern Coordinator for the Shark Research and Conservation Program (SRC).

Like a lot of the scientists I know, teaching (outside the classroom) and outreach are a key part of the work I do, and one of the things I love most about my job. This isn’t because scientists accrue big rewards for prioritizing outreach (in the academic tenure system, we can actually pay a pretty high price for spending time on anything other than research/required teaching/publication) but because we want to get people excited about science and care a lot about the subjects we study.

Unfortunately, we aren’t always maximizing our positive impacts on students or citizen scientists who engage with our research—maybe because we aren’t familiar enough with the vast and labyrinthine social science literature on what works in education.* (I wish I had a dollar for every time a natural scientist, in talking to me about education or outreach, has said “if only someone would study this…” without being aware that education researchers have been studying it, in some cases for decades.)

This list is in no way comprehensive, but distills some key points I’ve come across that have influenced the way I teach and interact with students. My thinking here is geared towards programs like those I work with, which take students into the field and involve them in science or outreach in a direct, hands-on way. Although I think it’s great for scientists to go into classrooms and give talks, this advice is only partially applicable to that kind of outreach, and is really geared towards out-of-classroom folks.

Let’s also note that a variety of good potential outcomes have been shown to result from experiential education programs, including increased academic success, improved self-esteem and “self-concept” (i.e., how kids see themselves), increased personal and social responsibility, and better attitudes towards and relationships with adults. There’s no question that those of us who work with students above and beyond what is required or expected of us are doing a good thing. The question becomes: how do we do that good thing better?

* In this list, I am not attempting to differentiate between environmental education, experiential education, service education, scientific outreach, adventure education or any of the other various terms which can be used to describe similar programs. Although there can be important differences in approaches and goals among these categories, it is key elements that the most effective programs have in common that I am interested in.

Politely optimistic: What do the Canadian election results mean for ocean science and conservation?

October 20, 2015October 20, 2015 Guest Writer 2 Comments

Blogging

Julia Whidden completed her Masters in Biology with a focus on marine conservation from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2015. Her project evaluated population demographics and species identification of two at-risk species of skate in the inner Bay of Fundy. She joins Dr. Neil Hammerschlag’s lab at the University of Miami for the year as a Fulbright Student and shark research intern. Follow her on twitter!

Rachel Skubel graduated with an M.Sc. in Environmental Science from McMaster University where she studied climate impacts on water cycling in temperate forests, and a B.Sc. from the University of Western Ontario. Her current research interests revolve around how oceanic predators will be impacted by anthropogenic environmental changes. She is a currently a shark research intern with Dr. Neil Hammerschlag’s lab at the University of Miami. Follow her on twitter!

Up until this past year, the thought of Canadian politics had probably never crossed your mind. For some of you, your introduction to the topic may have been via the astute criticisms of John Oliver published this past weekend. His YouTube video currently skyrocketing at just under 3 million views in less than 48 hours, may have even been the introduction to Canadian politics for some Canadians. Let’s face it: in comparison to the flashy and sometimes trashy race of our neighbors to the south (ahem, you Americans), Canadian politics are usually tame, boring, and dry. In 2011, our last major election, 61.1% of Canadians voted (14.8 million), but up until the election last night, at least 68.5% have actively contributed to changing the dire political and environmental landscape formed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative cronies over the past 10 years. This voter turnout is the highest since 1993, and certainly demonstrates that – not unlike your defeat of Republicans following the Bush years – Canadians were ready for change.

To our newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we say welcome and we’re ready for action.

Oarfish: The true tale of the fish we can’t seem to get enough of

August 19, 2015August 19, 2015 Guest Writer 4 Comments

Blogging

Dr. Misty Paig-Tran is Assistant Professor at California State University Fullerton. Her laboratory (Functional Anatomy, Biomechanics, and Biomaterials) studies how animals feed and move, among other things. Her research is focused on big filter-feeding animals (Sharks and Manta rays) and mid-deep water fishes – you know, the scary looking ones. You can learn about her research here, and you can follow her on twitter.

Today I sit at my computer totally aghast that the media seems to have gone into a frenzy once again about the latest oarfish that washed up on Catalina yesterday. I get it. I too, as a marine biologist and self-admitted fish nerd, get totally excited any time a cool fish washes up. And I get extra excited about the oarfish in particular. Of course I do, I am currently studying the fish in my lab at Cal State. What’s not to like? It’s huge, silvery, and looks like a dragon. Myths about this fish are old and salty. However, there has been a ton of misinformation printed about this fish and now it’s my chance to set some things straight. So I will try to rectify this now. Ahem.

How I am fixing the internet

August 11, 2015 Guest Writer 1 Comment

Blogging

Alex Zrenner is a 2015 Kenan Summer Fellow and rising junior at Duke University. She is from St. Louis, Missouri and is pursuing a major in economics with a math minor. Each summer, the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University supports undergraduate Kenan Summer Fellows, a program meant to help students explore what it means to live an ethical life. Portions of this post were originally published on the Kenan Institute for Ethics’ website. Alex has written weekly updates about her project here, and is also creating video blogs for the project that can be seen here.

My name is Alex Zrenner, and I am fixing the Internet. Well actually, I am researching the Internet. I have spent the past six weeks studying the ethics of cyber harassment and free speech as one of this year’s Kenan Summer Fellows.

Crowdfunded shark research: Protect coastal shark migrations

July 9, 2015 Guest Writer

Science

Bryan Keller just graduated with his M.Sc. from Coastal Carolina University. For his thesis, he investigated the effect of familiarity on the social preferences of lemon sharks while researching at the Bimini Biological Field Station. Bryan and his team showed that lemon sharks do indeed prefer familiar individuals. Imagine this: You have two classes of kindergarten students that remained separated for one school year, and at the end of the year, the classes are mixed. More often than not, students would choose ‘friends’ based upon whom they are most familiar with, in this case that would be their classmates. Lemon sharks are the same way, they showed a preference for their ‘classmates’.

Offshore wind farms offer countless benefits, but will there be environmental costs? To help answer the looming question, we will tag a population of bonnethead sharks in South Carolina. The tags will communicate with acoustic receivers, and when the sharks swim close enough to the receiver, its presence will be documented. By using a series of receivers, we will be able to determine where a shark spends most of its time. After we know where the bonnetheads are spending their time, we will be able to conduct laboratory trials to determine if the introduction of offshore wind farms can displace the shark from this area. Recent work in SC showed that bonnetheads returned to the same estuary each year and from this, we know that the sharks aren’t randomly distributed throughout the environment. What if they can’t get back to the habitat they occupy every year? If offshore wind farms disrupt the marine ecosystem and prohibit sharks from returning, then there could be serious repercussions.

Women who live every week like Shark Week

July 8, 2015 Guest Writer

Science

Cynthia Wigren co-founded the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and the Gills Club. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Management and a Masters in Business Administration. She is an avid traveller and a scuba diver with a deep appreciation for wildlife on land and sea. Her underwater experiences with whale sharks, great hammerheads, nurse sharks, and great white sharks led her to leave the corporate world and establish a non-profit to support shark research and education programs.

This year, Shark Week has promised us more science and no fake documentaries (thank you Rich Ross!), but their ‘Finbassabor’ line-up leads me to believe that the majority of researchers featured will be men, once again. As long as Shark Week ditches mockumentarties for real science does it matter which researchers it features? With 42 million people tuning in during the week, I believe it does.