women in science | Southern Fried Science

American Elasmobranch Society announces new initiative to promote diversity in marine science

Posted on July 16, 2015 by David Shiffman

The American Elasmobranch Society is the world’s oldest and largest professional association of shark and ray scientists

The American Elasmobranch Society, the world’s largest and oldest professional society focusing on shark and ray research, announced a new diversity initiative today. The new Young Professional Recruitment Fund will identify and contact students, postdocs and early career professional from historically underrepresented minority groups and from developing countries whose research focuses on elasmobranchs. Additionally, if you are (or know of) a student, postdoc, or early career professional from a historically underrepresented minority group or a developing country, please feel free to reach out to us.

The Young Professional Recruitment Fund will be used to inform these early career scientists of the benefits of joining the American Elasmobranch Society. To welcome them to the Society and encourage their long-term participation, it will cover the costs of their Society membership for one year. Additionally, in cooperation with MinorityPostDoc.org, the fund will be used to give these scientists specialized professional development training, networking opportunities, and mentorship.

This fund is the latest in the American Elasmobranch Society’s continuing commitment to fostering diversity and inclusiveness in marine science. More details will be released soon. For more information, please contact Society Editor David Shiffman( WhySharksMatter at gmail dot com.)

Women who live every week like Shark Week

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Guest Writer

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.

Can Shark Week do more for its female viewers?

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Guest Writer

Vicky Vásquez is a Moss Landing Marine Labs graduate student under the Pacific Shark Research Center. Her Master’s thesis focuses on the soupfin shark population of San Francisco Bay. Before beginning her graduate program, Vicky worked in marine education for over 7 years with groups like the Ocean Discovery Institute and the Marine Science Institute. This work has fostered Vicky’s passion in outreach education with a special interest in working with at-risk students and under-served communities. She has continued this work as the founding Deputy Director of a new non-profit in San Francisco Bay, the Ocean Research Foundation (ORF). You can follow Vicky on Twitter @VickyV_TeamORF and get updates about ORF through their Facebook Page.

Was anybody else bothered by Shark Week’s King of Summer campaign? I wasn’t at first. I thought it was hilarious! I found this light-hearted commercial of a guy riding two sharks to be on par with the ridiculousness of SyFy shark movies like Sharknado or Ghost Shark. It’s just too silly to take seriously. More so, I was just relieved they finally moved away from their Snuffy the Seal theme which vilified and eventually killed a shark for eating its natural prey of seal. However, after watching the subsequent versions which include Bob the Shark and Rob Lowe, I couldn’t help but get a annoyed. What is with that freaking mermaid?!

So men are kings and women are mermaids?

Perhaps some of you may think I’m spoiling the fun of Shark Week by bringing this up, but the Be the King of Summer promotion reflects my point. People were asked to insert their own faces into this add. Although women did participate, they most commonly posted their faces as the mermaid at the King’s knees. I understand that this is all in good fun and obviously those women did too. However, very similar to this mermaid persona, is the growing number of women whose shark conservation work has been recognized for their sole approach of being sexy while swimming with large sharks. Despite that sounding like a jab against them, it really is not. My concern is that there is an equal number, if not more, women who are protecting sharks through research. For instance, there were 60 female scientists that presented research at the 2014 Sharks International Conference. Nevertheless, Shark Week predominantly features white male hosts and researchers despite the slowly growing number of women (as well as people of color) in the science and engineering fields. I therefore can’t help but wonder, where are they on TV?

The 45 most influential female ecologists alive today according to twitter

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Guest Writer

Melissa Giresi is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University interested in using genetic methods to assess population structure, connectivity and biodiversity of exploited marine fishes and invertebrates. For her dissertation, she is testing the null hypothesis that the dusky smoothhound shark, Mustelus canis, is a single genetically-panmictic population in U.S. waters and utilizing molecular and morphological markers to assess how many smoothhound species are present in the Gulf of Mexico. She is also involved with projects to investigate population connectivity in fine tooth sharks, black nose sharks, cobia, and amberjack.

Monica Turner, image courtesy University of Wisconsin

On Thursday, I tweeted “Name the most influential female ecologist (alive today) that you can think of.” After it was re-tweeted by several of my much more twitter-savvy colleagues and friends, I received an overwhelming number of responses. In retrospect, I should have created a hashtag to keep track of the responses. Forty-five influential female ecologists were named in this search, some of whom responded to the question themselves, naming their colleagues (but never naming themselves). The most influential female ecologists (alive today) according to the twitter-verse are listed in the table below in alphabetical order by last name.

Misunderstood Marine Life # 1 – The five biggest myths about Marine Biologists

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Andrew Thaler

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the single most misunderstood marine creature that calls our oceans its home: the rare, elusive, often smelly, occasionally employable, Marine Biologist!

For something so incredibly popular, articulate, good-looking, and revered, there sure are a lot of misconceptions about who marine biologists are and what they do.

Myth # 1 – All Marine Biologists have beards.

Yes, if you look through a history of marine scientists, you’ll find many pictures of old, bearded men. But that’s true if you look through the history of any science and reflects a long cultural history of gender discrimination and outright misogyny. Couple that with a long standing tradition among maritime cultures that women don’t belong on boats, and you might be led to believe that most marine biologists are men. That fact becomes futhur from the truth every day. Among the pioneers in marine science are Mary Rathburn, Julia Platt, and Rachel Carson, while modern barrier breakers range from Ruth Turner, the first woman to use the DSV Alvin for research, to Cindy Lee Van Dover, the first to pilot it (incidentally, no one has a beard on the Alvin, since it would interfere with the emergency respirator should the oxygen system fail).

The website Women Oceanographers (http://www.womenoceanographers.org/) has a spectacular series highlighting the contribution of women to marine sciences.

Myth # 2 – Marine Biologists all study whales and dolphins.

No, we don’t. Some of us don’t even particularly like whales or dolphins. For that matter, we don’t want to work at Sea World.

Myth # 3 – Marine Biologists hate fishermen.

Perhaps one of the most insidious rumors is that we have it out for fishermen. In retrospect, it’s not hard to see where this would come from. Any catch limit, fishery closure, or fishing regulation is going to track back somehow to the work of a marine biologist. And there are some marine biologists who are opposed to fishing, just like there are members of the general public opposed to fishing. But Marine Biologist and fishermen have the same goals – we both want a healthy, productive ocean (that both our livelihoods depend on). Most marine biologist that I know fish, eat fish, and support our local fishermen. In fact, if I didn’t screw up the schedule, I’ll be out fishing when this post is published. Unfortunately, as overfishing is one of the biggest problems facing the ocean, conflicts are unavoidable and we’re going to butt heads on important issues.

Even so, most Marine Biologists would love to see the ocean return to a state of abundance where fishermen can harvest without regulations. Dare to dream.

Myth # 4 – Marine Biologists spend their lives on the water.

This myth is more prevalent among aspiring Marine Biologists. The job looks glamorous, with trips to tropical islands, extended cruises, and life on the beach. While I hate to burst the bubble of the next generation, Marine Biology is mostly lab work and sitting in front of your computer. If I’m lucky, I’ll get maybe 3 months of field work every 2 years. The rest is endlessly freezing and thawing samples, pipetting clear liquids into other clear liquids, and typing, typing, typing. Don’t get me wrong, I love (almost) every minute of it, but it’s a far different lifestyle from what Jacques Cousteau led me to believe.

Myth # 5 – Marine Biologist are all just like Jacques Cousteau.

Milton Love said it best when he wrote “We really like Jacques Cousteau, too. But, drinking thousands of gallons of red wine while scuba diving around the world does not make you a marine biologist. It makes you a wonderful and effective spokesperson for the sea, and gives you a liver with the consistency of a chocolate necco wafer, but it does not make you a marine biologist.” Most research cruises are more akin to the Life Aquatic, anyway, but with more disasters and less research turtles surviving. A personal submarine would be nice, though.

Thank You NSF

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Amy Freitag

The National Science Foundation has recently announced the NSF Career-Life Balance Initiative largely in hopes of retaining women in the sciences past their the dissertation years. Most notably, the Initiative allows a year long pause in awarded grants to new parents. This pause matches the pause in the tenure process that most universities offer (but few faculty know about). In addition, parents can apply for supplemental funds to keep their labs running while on leave. In addition, NSF promises to advertise its new help for families, continue researching new methods of keeping women in the sciences, and continue to promote tenure pauses and spousal hires in its partner academic institutions.

Thinking about ways to make the academic environment more friendly to families is a topic that fascinates me both as a sociologist and as a person who will likely benefit from this initiative. According to the White House announcement for the program, the Initiative emphasizes the need for women in the sciences in order to maintain creativity and leadership. Language like “parental leave” instead of maternity leave also signifies that NSF is leading the way to a new kind of workplace, recognizing both men and women’s desires to balance work and family in an equitable way – not to put the burden of that balancing act on the mother. Kudos to NSF.