Congratulations to Megan Witnon, the latest Ichthyology Lab graduate from MLML!  Megan defended her thesis this week titled “Age, growth, and demography of the roughtail skate, Bathyraja  trachura, from the eastern Bering Sea.”  And her defense wasn’t complete without another amazing cake creation from MLML food art extraordinaire Diane Haas.

Though Diane has dabbled in dessert skates before, this one really takes the cake!  The butterfly shapes represent the vertebrae sections that researchers like Megan and Diane use to tell the age of  skate.  The purple vertebra represents the end product of a chemical process called histology that Megan used to better see the age bands in the vertebrae.   Now that’s a doubly sweet success!