Meyer-Kaiser lab

Sarah's scallop scrub station In the Meyer-Kaiser lab, we do things our own way. We travel frequently, multi-task constantly, and work however the science requires. So when my technician, Sarah, asked if it was ok to take scallop shells to her parents' home over the holiday break, I did not hesitate for a second. Sure, why not! The photos speak for themselves. Sarah's assignment is to measure growth rings in the shells of scallops that I collected the last two summers. The scallops were already shucked , but scraps of tissue clung to a few of the shells. There was biofouling on the exterior of many shells, and for others, the growth rings were not very visible. Sarah's solution was to start by cleaning the shells before she measured any rings. She used dish soap and water to clean off the scraps of tissue. Each shell had to go through two wash-rinse cycles and scrubbing with a wire brush to make sure the growth rings were unimpeded and clearly visible. Then she soaked ...

I followed Dave up the stairs on to the deck of SS United States . The producer had asked if he could interview a few members of the project team, and he wanted to scout locations for those interviews. I kept him company while the camera crew switched out their gear. As we emerged into the sunlight, I noticed the deck under my feet was a different color. Most of the deck on the ship was rusty red, but this outdoor patch was shiny silver. Aluminum. I paused. I had already drafted a schematic with all my planned sampling locations on the ship - was this aluminum deck included? If not, then it should be. I made a mental note to re-examine my sampling scheme when I got home and include the aluminum deck.  Tim Mullane, COO of Colleen Marine, discussing his company's mammoth task of preparing the ship for sinking.  Dave shared his thoughts with me as we walked. "This would be a good angle," he commented. Then a few minutes later, "I like this light." I listened and pr...

Never before in my life have I worn mascara and a hard hat for the same event.  On the bow of SSUS in Mobile. Photo by Dave Clark.  Friends, I am in Mobile, AL, where the iconic passenger liner, SS United States , is being readied to become the world's largest artificial reef. I am the leader of a scientific team that will establish the baseline physical, chemical, and biological condition of the ship as soon as it reaches the seafloor, then return every year to monitor how it changes. By tracking changes to the habitat (i.e., the ship) and the biological community over time, we can answer fundamental biological questions and understand how anthropogenic habitats impact the ocean. I am beyond excited for the research we will do.  A few months ago, a film producer got in contact with my team at WHOI. He was looking to make an IMAX film about shipwrecks and wanted to feature SS United States . We had a few Zoom conversations to iron out details and connect the producer with...

Every year, sometime around September, I cross a mental threshold. My brain switches into Paper Mode. After spending most of my year on field work, proposal writing, and mentorship, I realize that I have not submitted any papers for the year. That is absolutely unacceptable to my achievement-driven personality, so I ignore my email, crunch through my data, and bang out all my manuscripts for the year. By December, my annual crop of papers is with my co-authors for comment or even submitted for publication. This year, my crop is higher than usual. Instead of my average 3 papers, I have 6 ready to submit. I'm actually surprised at myself - I have done a lot this year. I'm pretty excited about the papers I've written this year, so I'd like to tell you about each of them.  1) The Fram larvae paper - this is one of Kharis's thesis chapters. She did the actual writing, but I'm counting it in my "crop" of papers for the year because I supervised and advised h...

Dr. Meyer-Kaiser and Dr. Schrage "Grad students are like pancakes: the first one always comes out a little funky." - just a thing that academics say to each other Ladies and gentleman, I have incredible news: my very first PhD student, Kharis Schrage, has graduated! Last week, Kharis successfully defended her dissertation and completed the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. She has earned the title of Dr. Schrage.  I am immensely proud of Kharis. She joined my lab in the summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when all field work was stalled and nobody know where the world was headed. Kharis wanted to focus her dissertation on the Arctic ecosystem, so she asked me to estimate the probability that I could get her to the Arctic within the 5-year program. I estimated 95%. In the end, Kharis made 5 trips to the Arctic during her PhD, including a few without me. She collected enough samples to fill an entire shelf of our lab freezer and enough data to fill its own hard drive. She prod...

With my husband, Carl, on a deco stop in Bonaire. Photo by Megan Applegate .  "I am currently on vacation in my natural habitat - underwater on a rebreather." - my automatic email responder over the past couple weeks About 2000 miles due south of my home in Massachusetts, there is a small desert island. The dry landscape is inhabited by tall cacti , feral donkeys , and blue-tailed lizards. Below water, the biodiversity is much greater - corals and snails and fishes abound. Historical relics of harsher times are visible above and below the waves, but now, the island's economy depends on tourism. This seemingly make-believe place is called Bonaire.  I've been to Bonaire several times, always for dive vacations. This year, my 2-week trip served a dual purpose. As a vacation, it allowed me time away from normal routines to reset and decompress. As a dive trip, it reinforced my technical diving skills and got me back up-to-date for scientific work underwater.  Showing ...

Friends, November is off to a very exciting start for my lab! A while ago, I was contacted by a reporter from CNN, Katie Hunt, who was curious about our eDNA project . You know the one I'm talking about - the pilot study my lab conducted to determine whether DNA collected from the environment could be used to locate human remains at archaeological sites. The study was a partnership with DPAA, a branch of the US Department of Defense that is responsible for locating, excavating, and repatriating the remains of all fallen US service members. They have thousands of open cases and were looking to speed up their process to provide closure to more families. My lab is one of the few in the country with equal expertise in archaeology and biology , so DPAA reached out to us. By sampling at sites with ongoing excavations, we were able to directly correlate eDNA results with findings of each excavation. That way, we could ground-truth whether eDNA was an effective methodology for locating hu...