Paul diligently sorting his samples in the lab. What was the point? Come hear his thesis to find out! (photo: E. Loury)
Congratulations to Phycology Lab student Paul Tompkins, who will be defending his thesis this Tursday, May 19th, at noon. Paul’s thesis is entitled “Distribution, Growth, and Disturbance of Catalina Island Rhodoliths.” What’s a rhodolith, you ask? If you can’t come hear the scoop on Thursday, check out these photos belows, or browsearound theDrop-In:
Rhodoliths are round, free-living corraline algae – kind of like ocean tumbleweeds (photo: P. Tompkins)
Unlike most seaweeds, rhodoliths are algae that have a hard skeleton made out of calcium carbonate. The structure of a rhodolith bed creates a habitat for many types of organisms, like a mini coral reef or kelp forest. Beds like the one shown below were the subject of Paul’s thesis.
A rhodolith bed at Catalina Island. (photo: P. Tompkins)
Congratulations to Ichthyology student Jon Walsh, who recently defended his thesis: “Habitat Use of Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis), estimated from otolith microchemistry, in the San Francisco Estuary, and its effect on total mercury and heavy metal body burden upon capture.”
Jon used the chemical composition of otoliths, or fish ear bones, to track where a fish had traveled throughout its lifetime in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. He also looked at heavy metal contamination in the fish fillets and found high levels of mercury had accumulated in the fish. Luckily, this striped bass cake creation by Diane Haas is mercury free!
Megan with the cake version of her Master’s thesis subject (photo: E. Loury)
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!
The Roughtail Skate as interpreted by Diane Haas (photo: E. Loury)
That’s Master Brower to you – Jeremiah at his thesis defense.Jeremiah Brower
by Jeremiah Brower, Geological Oceanography Lab
Greetings from your resident geologist blogger, who I’m happy to say is recently graduated! This last year has consisted of me going to conferences, writing my thesis, RE-writing my thesis, RE-writing it AGAIN and then finally defending my thesis to the MLML faculty and my peers, parents and friends. There was a lot of frantic writing followed by long periods of downtime while I watched the clock tick by and the end of the year get closer – but overall it was a great experience and a incredible relief to finally get the thesis done!
The thesis was the main focus of my life for nearly 4 years and the defense on October 4th went incredibly well, but I have to say it was a bit anti-climactic to have a four year project summed up in a hour. I also had to run back to work immediately after the defense, so the reality of my situation didn’t really sink until several weeks after the event. So the question now becomes “now what?” Read more →
With one more semester over and the year drawing to a close, we wanted to take a look back at the amazing thesis defense lineup of the past fall. We got to cheer on some of our great Drop-In blog contributors as they became newly-minted Masters. While we’re excited for them in their new endeavors, fingers crossed that they will still write for us from time to time! Get a load of all the intelligence pouring out of Moss Landing Marine Labs:
Jeremiah Brower, the sediment master
On October 4th, Jeremiah defended his thesis, entitled, “A study of storm-induced variations in the littoral sediment transport patterns of central Monterey Bay.” Read more about Jeremiah’s love of geology and all things to do with rocks on his student profile and his blog entries!
Danielle Frechette with a salmon – she studied both halves of a bird/fish predator prey interaction.
On October 26th, Danielle Frechette talked about tracking sea gulls tagged with radio transmitters as part of her thesis entitled, “Impacts of avian predation on juvenile salmonids in central California watersheds.” Check out Danielle’s student profile and read her blog entries!
Mariah Boyle with a long-nose skate.
On November 2nd, Mariah Boyle described the food habits of the roughtail skate and its deepsea food web with her thesis “Trophic relationships of Bathyraja trachura and sympatric fishes.” Check out Mariah’s student profile and read her blog entries!
Amanda Kahn, an expert on deepsea sponges
On December 8th, long-time Drop-In blogger and resident sponge expert Amanda Kahn defended her thesis entitlted “Mitochondrial gene arrangement in sponges, with descriptions of two new species from the abyssal northeast Pacific.” Check out Amanda’s student profile and read her blog entires!
On December 10th, Simon Brown gave us a statistical rundown on skate diet in his thesis entitled, “Sources of diet variation in two abundant skate species from the northern Gulf of Alaska continental shelf.” Congrats, Simon!
Heather Hawk shows off some historical abalone specimens.
On December 15th, Heather Hawk gave us the ins and outs of abalone genetics by defending her thesis entitled “Historic diversity of the endangered white abalone Haliotis sorenseni.” Check out Heather’s student profile here!
Congratulations to all of you, and thanks for sharing all of your stories on the Drop-In!
Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a marine biologist? I mean, really like?
Well, you’ve dropped in to a community of marine scientists who want to show you just that. Welcome to the blog for the Moss Landing Marine Labs (also known as MLML), located by beautiful Monterey Bay in California. Here you can find the inside scoop on the life of a marine scientist in all its wet, smelly, messy glory!
Yes, a marine scientist. Because just like marine biology is more than the study of dolphins and whales, studying the ocean is more than just marine biology. Chemistry, physics and geology are all tied together with biology in the field of study we call oceanography. We want to introduce you to the many diverse pieces and processes of the ocean that we are learning about, and show you how they all fit together.
Come explore the ocean with us!
And just who are we? The contributors to this blog are mostly graduate students currently studying at MLML. We’ve all finished our bachelor’s or undergraduate degrees (the four years or so people refer to as “going to college.”) Now we are working diligently enroute to a Master’s degree, which many people complete before getting their Ph. D., or to become more qualified for jobs.
In order to get that coveted Master’s degree, we are each required to complete a thesis, and that means conducting our own research. And that means getting our hands dirty! Doing research lets us have some pretty incredible experiences that we just have to share, so we’re going to take you along. We will bring you stories fresh from the field and live from the laboratory. We will take you out to sea on research boats and down to kelp forests beneath the waves. Ultimately, we want to feel that the ocean right at our doorstep is part of your life too, wherever you are.
So come drop on in and get to know all the cool features of our blog. Click around all the nifty links stuffed into the sidebar on the right: Meet our blog editors and discover how we got started. Check out interviews with MLML alumni to find out what people actually do with their degrees in marine science. Explore the resources that have helped us along the way, and expand your science vocabulary. Read our first-hand stories and our tips for surviving graduate school, check out the photos featured in our posts, watch our videos.
And tell us what you want to learn! Our goal in creating this blog is to bring together resources and encouragement for future marine scientists and marine science enthusiasts. So whether you’re a high school student who wants to know what it takes to study marine life, a college student wondering if you should go to graduate school, or someone who just wants to learn more about the ocean, this blog is for you!
So get exploring, get excited and get inquisitive. At the end of the day, we hope you’ll share our enthusiasm for investigating how the world works, and appreciate the value of studying our ocean and its myriad inhabitants.
