Meyer-Kaiser lab

Friends, I am excited to announce the publication of a new research paper today! This paper highlights the role that shipwrecks play in supporting biodiversity in the mesophotic zone, between 40 and 200 m depth.  Some of you might remember that in June 2022, I participated in a research expedition offshore of Louisiana . We left the bayou and headed south on a catamaran to explore shipwrecks and naturally-occurring hard-bottom reefs (aka boulder reefs ) on the seafloor. Using a remotely-operated vehicle, we recorded ultra-high-definition videos from each habitat. Our shipwrecks included the CP Baker , an historic mobile oil drilling rig, and the Hamlet , a Norwegian freighter sunk by a U-Boat in WWII, plus two smaller, unidentified vessels.  After the cruise, my colleagues and I spent the next several months analyzing the videos we had captured. I counted and identified all the fishes , corals and other invertebrates , and even planktonic larvae I had collected in my net. My ...

"Work smarter, not harder" Will and Matt hard at work in the lab - every single one of my high school classmates who angered me the most I hate the phrase "Work smarter, not harder." It drives me up the wall. I have built my career on hard work - it is the reason I am successful. Anytime someone else figures out a faster way to reach the same goal, it feels like they're cheating the system.  Well, friends, you can probably guess where this is going. My lab has a number of interns from local high schools who come in once or twice a week and help with lab work. Recently, the interns have made so much progress on our larval sorting project that we actually finished the entire set of samples. The data are now in the hands of my graduate student, Kharis. Finishing the larval samples meant that our high school interns could move onto a new project - this time, sorting sediment samples from the high Arctic.  I gave the students my little speech about why we're in...

It was Valentine's Day. Of all the roundtable meetings we held with fishermen in Massachusetts, I expected this one to have the lowest turnout. After all, who wants to spend their free time talking about marine debris with a bunch of scientists on Valentine's Day? But the meeting had our largest turnout yet. Some of the fishermen even brought their wives - I hope they had romantic dinner plans afterward.  We sat together in a corner of the Fishing Heritage Center in New Bedford. We were surrounded by reminders of the fishing industry - a mannequin wearing an orange survival suit, a video from a scallop processing plant, models of fishing gear and boats. It was the perfect setting for our discussion.  At every roundtable, we have had one or two big personalities. A couple of fishermen with strong opinions come and make sure we hear everything they have to say. Don't get me wrong, these big personalities push the conversation forward. The whole point of our roundtable meeting...

Text and photos by postdoc Johanna Weston First day of school drop-off energy. That is how I felt about securing DeepZoo to the lander for its first deep ocean deployment on the first day of the cruise, AT50-33 at 9N of the East Pacific Rise. Did I input action times in UTC correctly? Did I close the housing correctly? Is DeepZoo secured tightly enough to the frame to withstand the force when the lander hits the seafloor? What if the lander doesn’t come back to the surface? All these questions and more flooded my mind. DeepZoo needs to open its door, turn on the thruster, turn off the thruster, and then close the door. Deep breaths. The lander was raised off the deck. The lander was released into the water. The lander sank to ~2500 m on the seafloor. The human-occupied submersible Alvin found the lander on the seafloor. Alvin picked the lander up and drove it several meters away from the recently discovered YBW vent. DeepZoo’s door opened, the thruster turned on for 20.5 hours,...

The setting for our first meeting at Net Your Problem, a fishing gear recycler in New Bedford. Those nets are an example of the very fishing gear we're trying to keep off of shipwrecks. Friends, it is a busy week for me! My marine debris project is ramping up as we take on one of our major activities for the year: stakeholder engagement. Yes, that is a fancy term for "talking to fishermen."  Fishermen are experts on the marine environment. They spend more days at sea than any scientist - usually by at least a factor of 10. I have only spent a few days on fishing boats in my life, and each one was an incredible learning experience . Fishermen know things - just by being on the water so often, they amass a level of oceanographic knowledge that would take several years to match in a classroom. My team wants to know why fishing nets get entangled on shipwrecks and how we could prevent entanglements in the future. To answer those questions, we are going straight to the sourc...

"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Diane and I in Times Square - the movie The Wizard of Oz I stepped out of Penn Station with a backpack on my back and a garment bag I borrowed from my husband in one hand. WHOI's brand-new Vice President for Academic Programs and Dean, Dr. Diane Foster, walked beside me. We followed the signs, climbed up the stairs, trying to get our orientation before we got to street level. When I felt cold winter air and saw the glow of streetlights, I figured we were almost there. One more set of stairs, and we emerged...into Madison Square Garden. How in the world did that happen? Diane and I pulled out our phones. One route to the hotel would take us through Times Square; another would take us down quieter streets. Did we want to brave the crowds? For a chance to see the lights and say we were in Times Square, oh yes, we did.  Any New Yorker reading this right now is probably cringing. Friends, I am a small-town girl. I grew ...