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No, I’m not talking about baby rockfish, I’m talking about new students!

Seventeen students joined the labs this fall, and they’ve brought with them great experience and fresh perspectives.

If you’d like to learn about the new students, their adventures prior to graduate school, and what brought them to MLML, take a look at our “Meet the Students” page.   There you can find new students Emily Donham, Sarah Jeffries, and Angela Szesciorka.

Check back often, they’ll be posting first-hand accounts of their marine science endeavors soon.

By Michelle Marraffini, Invertebrate Zoology Lab

This weekend MLML students left the classroom and the lab to participate in the Annual California Coastal CleanUp Day!  Students ventured outside on this gloriously sunny day to help clean up and protect part of the ecosystem we work so hard to understand.  New, continuing, and even graduated MLML students came out to join other volunteers and to put in some dirty work.  According to the Save Our Shores website, this September 17th volunteers at over 81 cleanup sites, from Wadell Creek in the north to the Big Sur coast in the south, helped prevent over 17,000 pounds of pollution from entering 157 miles of beaches, rivers, lakes, creek, and sloughs.  If you missed this year’s annual clean up day don’t worry, Save Our Shores hosts a monthly cleanup in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties.  For more information, including how to sign up for a beach clean-up, visit http://www.saveourshores.org/volunteer/.

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

My very first class as a shiny and eager new student at MLML, in that distant year of 2008, was Chemical Oceanography with Dr. Kenneth Coale.  That class not only kicked of my graduate path in marine science, it also helped spark the inspiration for this very blog.

During each class, before delving into the particulars of the nitrogen cycle and the oxygen minimum zone, Kenneth would use the first ten minutes to talk about some big issue facing the ocean.  The fateful day we talked about the article “110 Misconceptions About the Ocean,” was certainly a wakeup call.  Learning what major gaps existed in the public’s “ocean literacy,” combined with a discussion of blogs in Joan Parker’s Library Research Methods class, put the wheels in motion that helped me create the Drop-In.  As I wrap up my time at MLML, I just wanted to thank Kenneth for his many contributions to MLML that I have found so inspiring.

Some of my favorite memories of Kenneth include seeing him in the front row of almost every seminar and student thesis defense, always ready with a thoughtful and insightful question and an expression of support for the speakers.  He also would provide the turkey for the lab holiday party and carve it himself, and one year brought a build-your-own chocolate mousse dessert that also demonstrated some delicious principles of chemistry.   I enjoyed seeing him as an active member of our community despite his many administrative duties – he even came out in style for our Lab Olympics this year.

I have also benefited from Kenneth knowing students well enough as individuals to direct us towards fitting opportunities.  After becoming aware of my interest in science communication and outreach, Kenneth got me involved with the MARINE program to represent MLML in developing programs for all marine graduate students in the Monterey Bay Area.  He also suggested me as an interview subject for the Ocean Project by SepctorDance, where I was in the company of many top-notch ocean scientists.

So thank you, Kenneth, for all the work and heart you dedicated to the lab as our Director.  Your kindness and support helped make my graduate experience at MLML truly enjoyable.

BBC piece on glacial retreat with Dr. Iain Stewart.  The Columbia Glacier in Alaska is breaking into the ocean 30 times faster than before (20 years ago).

The link is found here

 

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

I’ll admit, the prospect of spending ten days at sea aboard a 60 foot fishing vessel to do a fish survey had me a bit nervous.  The conditions in sunny southern California are nothing to rival the Bering Sea storms that Nate Jones blogged about – but even so, there can be tense moments.  The day I have in mind was while we were trawling off the coast of San Diego.  The continental shelf is very wide in this area, and we were miles from shore on the continental slope. With nothing but water all around us, we were reeling in our long net when suddenly it wouldn’t budge any further.  We were stuck.

Our lead scientist and the fishing crew deliberated our choices.  We could cut the net, which would involve a considerable loss of money, and any further sampling would literally be cut short.  We’d have to return to port early, and our survey would be over.  Or they could try to salvage the net, although how to do so without any help in over a thousand feet of water was beyond me.  Unable to contribute any useful skills or advice to the situation, I curled up and took a nap.  The crew later said they were impressed that I seemed unperturbed by the whole situation.  But in reality, sleeping was my best way to avoid thinking of that fact that I was bobbing in a tiny boat effectively pinned to the bottom of the sea.

The crew’s strategy to free us from our deep-sea snare turned out to be straightforward: it involved letting out one side of the net, then reeling it in as they let the other side out.  This alternating dance of pull and release essentially rocked the net back and forth, attempting to shake it from the grip of whatever underwater ledge or rocky outcrop had us snagged.

After about three tense hours, it worked.  With a sigh of relief and a tinge of sadness, I welcomed our tattered net as it limped back to the surface, a messy tangle of floats and line.  Once it was aboard, the crew set about mending the tear.  I’m fascinated by the historic artistry involved in “sewing web,” as the mending of the net is called.  I have to say I was not a quick study in the skill, but my fellow scientist Melanie was an old hand at it.  Consider it just another a job hazard in the world of fishing.