This week has been full of late-day thunderstorms, which add drama to an afternoon in the lab but might also render that lab completely useless. When the electricity goes out, today’s grad student is left staring bleakly at the instrument that was surely about to return the data that would revolutionize her research. There is … Continue reading
Funneling women into STEM majors seems easy enough. Add enough women in the mix, and (like trickle-down economics) those women will get tenure track positions, they’ll encourage the next generation and so on. In a perfect world, if a girl were interested in science, she would study science, and then she would get a job … Continue reading
Check out A Scientist at Sea: California Current Research Cruise (Part I) as well! This research cruise is about halfway over and we find ourselves within sight of Big Sur, off the coast of southern California. Everyone is searching, frantically, for water. The dark irony of it hasn’t escaped the scientists aboard the R/V Melville—we’re … Continue reading
When you’re in the middle of, say, Indiana, it’s easy to feel disconnected from the ocean. The coastline is hundreds of miles away, and you probably have plenty of environmental problems to worry about closer to home. But marine conservation is not solely the purview of coastal communities: since all rivers ultimately lead to the … Continue reading
Hola from Mexico! It is an exciting summer for us at UNdertheC! I am currently in Akumal, Mexico with the Bruno lab for a week of field work. Kelsey is also in the field but field work for all of our different research areas at UNdertheC can be very different. Follow Kelsey’s oceanography cruise and … Continue reading
As a grad student I often find myself in conversations with colleagues concerning job prospects, diversity, biases in science, and the difficulties of publishing. I’m lucky to be in a very diverse marine science department full of students from all types of backgrounds. We have more female grad students than male grad students around here, … Continue reading
From Kelsey, currently (haha, pun!) on her California Current Cruise- This week, I’m writing to you from someplace other than my little cubicle in the Marine Sciences Dept.—instead, I’m aboard the good ship R/V Melville, currently sailing through the Pacific Ocean! My advisor, another graduate student from my lab (Natalie of Living with Diatoms, Part … Continue reading
As promised but a little late, here’s a breakdown of current tidal energy technologies! This post is similar to my previous summary of wave energy techniques, so hopefully you’ll find it just as informative. The utilization of tidal, or as it is sometimes termed ‘current,’ energy is a bit different from wave energy in its … Continue reading
The International Coral Reef Initiative recently released a report detailing the status of Caribbean coral reefs from 1970-2012. Based on data from 88 location around the Caribbean, the report found that average coral cover declined by over 50% while algal cover is over three times higher. This pair of opposite trends is called a “phase-shift” where the … Continue reading
Do you eat seafood? Most of us do. It is delicious after all. By now I’m sure you are aware of issues involving sustainable seafood. Not all of the fish we eat are fished (or grown) sustainably (ex: orange roughy ). In recent years, sustainable seafood has been on the minds of many and several … Continue reading
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