I am willing to bet most people have never heard of paleotempestology before. I hadn’t heard of it before I took a marine geology course. In a course I am taking this semester, we decided to reexamine the topic because a lot of individual studies are debatable. So, if the title of this post didn’t already give it …
Have you ever noticed a rip current at the beach? If you or someone you know was caught in a rip current, would you know what to do? If you’ve been paying attention to the coastal news along North Carolina recently, you may have noticed recent stories about rip currents and rip current safety. Dr. …
Having no publications to my name and only nebulous drafts of several (hopefully) publishable papers, I am not an expert on how to get published. This is why I attended a student workshop on this very topic at the 2018 ASLO summer meeting in Victoria, BC. In this workshop a panel of editors in chief …
Martín Benavides is a PhD student in Marine Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill. His research focuses on the variability of coastal shark communities in both time and space. He is also interested in the movement ecology of sharks in estuarine systems. Martín is a proud father of two boys and provides a unique prospective to …
Applications have been submitted. Recruitment weekends are near (or have already come and gone). Funding source notification dates are coming up. And most exciting of all–graduate school acceptances are around the corner. It is an exciting time to see your hard work pay off. But wait. Hold your horses. Here are some things you should …
The ocean is home to some strange and mysterious critters – including some that could give the Justice League a run for their money. From immortal invertebrates to flying fish, here are four super powered ocean animals. The one that can walk on land While there are a number of amphibious fish out there, …
The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) application season is here. I was fortunate enough to receive a fellowship for my application is 2017 after an unsuccessful one in 2016. From one rejected and one accepted, here is a list of resources that helped get me through it, a bit of my personal …
Most productivity gurus say that when you hit a wall, you should switch tasks. This is how I ended up reading a paper about beavers who managed to hijack a wetland restoration for their benefit. So congratulations! You’re in the right place to learn some fancy philosophy terms and think about wetlands from a whooole …
As modern marine scientists, we spend a lot of time learning to effectively communicate science to various audiences. That’s mostly so we can make friends at parties, but has some nice side benefits like educating the general public, whatever. Sometimes though, and I’m probably admitting to a cardinal sin of outreach here, there’s a certain …
When I tell people I am a graduate student at a marine lab they often ask me about what type of sea creatures I get to work with. I then have to do my best to explain what I actually do without them completely losing interest in my research. I will now attempt to do … Continue reading
Wikipedia defines a Postdoctoral Researcher (postdoc for short) “a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies… The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pursue additional research, training, or teaching in order to have better skills to pursue a career in academia, research, or other fields.” I feel like … Continue reading
It’s funny, sometimes, the random facts you remember from when you were growing up. One I vividly remember is my 9th grade biology teacher telling us that lecithin, a common additive in food and cosmetics, was originally derived from algae. Who knows why this fact stuck with me (maybe because she challenged us to find … Continue reading
Funding for scientific research can come from all sorts of seemingly unlikely sources. Recently, a ten-year ecological research and monitoring program funded by the US Department of Defense (DoD) came to a close. I was lucky enough to attend the final symposium where researchers from across the East Coast presented their findings. When I first … Continue reading
This is a guest post written by STEM education consultant Chris Anderson. Chris writes the science education blog Science Over Everything. 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean. The oceans contain 97% of the Earth’s water and are home to 50% of the Earth’s species. And while 40% of Americans live in … Continue reading
Before writing this post, I did a quick search of UNdertheC looking for any hits related to ‘citizen science’, and surprisingly, nothing came up. I guess this means this will be the first post, tangentially related, to what is known as citizen science. So what is citizen science? The formal definition is: ‘the collection and … Continue reading
Here at UNC Marine Sciences, we have a really cool program that allows graduate students in the department to nominate and then select a seminar speaker to come to the university and give a talk. It’s a unique opportunity for students to select a speaker that not only conducts interesting, world-class research but that also … Continue reading
Symposia! AKA great, low stakes opportunities to get out of the office, share the results you have been trying to make sense of for months, and hear about the cool research being done by your peers (plus free food). I had the opportunity to go to a few symposia recently and thought I would … Continue reading
What was the last thing you wore for a workout? For me, it was leggings and a tank top. They’re at least 80% polyester, kept me from keeling over in the middle of yoga, and will slowly pollute the ocean when I wash them tomorrow. Siiiigh. You’ve been lured into another Sad Marine News post … Continue reading
Last month I wrote a post detailing what a reef is and why they should matter to you regardless of where you live. This month I am building off of that idea and talking about something that I get a lot of questions about. Artificial reefs and reef restoration. What is a reef? For review, … Continue reading
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