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 …
Once again, it’s Shark Week on Discovery Channel. As a marine scientist I can’t condone the unholy union of fact and fiction which has seemed to characterize this year’s programming (see “Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine” and “Megalodon: The Shark That Lives”), but I can’t deny that sharks are pretty awesome. Despite evidence that a … Continue reading
You know that routine when the electricity goes out, but you find yourself flipping the lightswitch every time you walk into a room anyway? That’s how I imagine the people of Toledo felt last week when they went to fill up the tea kettle- take a shower- wash an apple- top off the dog dish- … Continue reading
As a scientist studying issues related to climate change, I have had my share of futile conversation, arguments, and debates with climate deniers. It happens, perhaps too frequently. I recently had one of these conversations with a well-educated, young engineer during a cross-country flight. Said engineer was not so sure that the human impact on … Continue reading
Since lionfish invaded the Caribbean and Atlantic, there have been programs promoting the consumption of lionfish in an effort to control them. There have been lionfish cookouts following lionfish derbies, restaurants serving lionfish, and even fishermen selling and exporting lionfish filets. But in 2012, Florida Sea Grant and the FDA found detectable levels of ciguatera … Continue reading
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
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