Meyer-Kaiser lab

DeepZoo in a test tank at AVAST. Photo by Johanna Weston. I love seeing members of my lab succeed . Johanna, my postdoc, has recently been working at WHOI's engineering hub, AVAST, to finalize her full-ocean-depth zooplankton sampler. She calls it DeepZoo . This week, DeepZoo had a major milestone: the first in-water test! Johanna sent an update to every member of the lab, complete with a photo of DeepZoo in action. "DeepZoo's first full working dunk," she wrote. "Over 10 minutes, it logged data and battery voltage, opened the door, spun the thruster, closed the door, and stopped log...Feels like I just hit a view after a lot of switchbacks."  I am proud of Johanna's accomplishment. DeepZoo started as an idea, but she has turned the sampler into a reality. What's more, the relatively small sampler pumps an immense amount of water. With it, Johanna should be able to collect new specimens from the deep sea - she even has an opportunity to do so coming...

Years ago, I vented to my husband, Carl , about a project that I had wanted to do but couldn't get funded. The proposal fell through at the last minute, and I was sad. Now, Carl is 8 years older than me and has plenty of life experience to show for it. He has been not just a partner but also a guide and a sounding board for me over the years. When I expressed my frustration over the failed proposal, he just shrugged.  "It's a funnel," he said. A career in academia means constantly watching your work get filtered, sifted, and funneled, until only the your very best work remains. You have 100 ideas, but only 50 of them turn into actual proposals. Of those 50, statistically speaking, only about 5 will get funded. Based on my experience , only one will work how it's supposed to, but if you're lucky, you can squeak out a few published papers anyway. It's a funnel. I'm right in the middle of the funnel right now. This week, I have worked on 3 different pro...

Sarah's work station at WHOI, where she has sorted thousands of animals so far. Here, she's neck-deep in local polychaetes.  My technician, Sarah, is amazing . I lean on her heavily. Sarah can handle herself with very little direction when I assign her a project. She's highly detail-oriented, so I know she won't miss a single thing. Most of the time, I hand her a set of samples and walk away - she's got it. And I can trust that she will reach out when she needs help.  This week, Sarah asked for help with some samples. She has been cranking away, sorting and identifying animals from Vineyard Sound  for a project we're doing with a local consulting company . We touch base regularly to identify any tricky species together. But the tricky ones have piled up. Sarah was feeling behind. She asked for two focused days on the microscope with me, so I kept my schedule as clear as possible and joined her in the lab.  One of the bivalves in our samples Sarah came to our me...

Friends, today another paper from my Palau coral project is out! The postdoc on the project, Cas, led an analysis of how different corals respond to high temperatures. You probably remember that we found 3 cryptic lineages of Porites corals at our study sites. Cas wanted to find out how those lineages differ and how each one handles the environmental conditions they live in. As it turns out, each lineage has a different strategy - and it's not just the corals themselves. The algal symbionts and microbial communities that live inside them contribute to thermal tolerance, too. It's a long, detailed paper. You can read our work here in Global Change Biology :  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gcb.17578

I have big plans for Hollis . And he has big plans for himself. One of the first things he told me when we first met is that he is college-bound. No questions. No second thoughts. He is going to college. Alright, dude, let's get you into college.  We spent all last year sorting larvae from Arctic zooplankton samples. There are still more samples to go through, but I didn't want Hollis to spend a second year sitting at a microscope - he already knows how to sort larvae. It's time to expand his range of skills. When we started mentorship this year, I told Hollis about some of the lab techniques I wanted to introduce him to. I had barely finished saying the words "DNA extraction" before he squealed in delight.  The scallop project we're working on right now provides an excellent opportunity to introduce Hollis to molecular biology techniques. We've separated all the bivalve larvae from the samples, but we have to verify that the larvae we're looking at...

For a while now, I have mentored an intern named Hollis . He was matched with me through a mentorship program at his school and stayed on as a volunteer over the summer. We're now in the second year of mentorship, and Hollis and I are already scheming about ways to keep working together long-term. He's still in high school, but he's already becoming a full-fledged member of the team.  Hollis spent most of last year helping to sort larvae from the high Arctic, but this year, I wanted to introduce him to new techniques. We're working together on an analysis of scallop larvae from Georges Bank. The task sounds simple: count how many scallop larvae are in my samples from each station. But that is easier said than done.  The samples are thick . Scallop larvae are tiny, so I had to use a super fine mesh net to collect them. So fine, in fact, that the net didn't just catch the larvae - it caught all the diatoms that were in the water, too. We're basically hunting fo...

Holding onto the rail with one elbow, I fished through my backpack with my other hand. It had to be in there somewhere. My fingertips registered the plastic texture, and my hand wrapped around the rectangular shape. There it was: my card for the Washington DC Metro. Just in time. I smiled. That little plastic card with $3 left on it has lived in my backpack since 2019 . It's about time I used it again.  I stepped off of the airport tram and scanned the overhead signs for my train.  My Marine Debris project is one of many funded recently by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That means I am now part of a national community of concerned investigators trying to remove trash from our oceans. NOAA SeaGrant, the federal agency that funded my proposal, has organized a series of meetings to connect us with each other. Once per year, I will travel to NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, MD to update the community about my team's work.  This was my first marine debris symposium, an...