The octopus in the corner

My office at WHOI is in the corner. It's in the corner of the lab, which is in the corner of the building. When I first moved into my office, I noticed there was a whiteboard on the door with a drawing in the corner. I guess this means I'm the octopus?

I've spent a lot of time in my corner recently, just reading papers at my desk. The first part of any project is getting acquainted with the pertinent background information, which means diving into the literature. It's a lot of reading, which takes a lot of time. At least I have a comfortable reading space. 

The second thing I've been doing to prepare for my project is getting familiar with the local fauna. My experimental organisms are all drawn from local docks, so I've met with various other researchers who know the local species. It's a learning process, but thankfully, the forms are all pretty distinct. I'm learning the most common species around Woods Hole are all non-native, meaning they were transported here from elsewhere and accidentally or purposefully introduced. It doesn't matter for my experiment where the species come from, but it's interesting to know how much the dock communities have changed over the past several years. 

I look forward to getting my project off the ground. Alright, now back to my corner.

A few species living on a rope at one of the local docks