Meyer-Kaiser lab

Fisherman John, State Senator Mark Montigny,  and archaeologist Calvin Mires after a roundtable discussion at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center. Back when I was in college, the cafeteria workers put inspirational quotes on the centerpieces of our dining room tables. There was one that really stuck with me, though I'm sure if I tried to relay it verbatim, I would mess it up. I can give you the main message. It had to do with farming - or rather, farming as a metaphor for all other pursuits. For creative professions like science, you are not always in a harvesting season. Some seasons are for planting, others for pruning. Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is leave the plants in the ground and just let them grow. You'll get to harvest soon.  Patience has always been hard for me. I'm one of those people who wants to harvest, harvest, harvest - in fact, my ambition almost always outpaces the resources at my disposal. That's the main reason why a random qu...

Friends, it is the first day of spring. Dear goodness, did that sneak up on me. I didn't grow up in an environment that valued or even paid attention to natural cycles - my life was more tightly regulated by the school calendar than the sun. But as I've gotten older, I find myself paying more attention to the climate around me. Circadian and annual cycles in light. Patterns of wind , waves, and tide . I study how organisms survive and adapt in the marine environment, but I'm an organism too. I should pay attention to my habitat.  The onset of a new season is a chance for me to check in with myself. If winter is ending, I should have finished all my winter projects. The spring projects beckon. Am I ready? This winter, my focus was on proposal writing . I have cranked out multiple hefty, detailed plans for scientific studies that I want to do over the next few years. Each one has about a 10% chance of getting funded. All I can do now is wait.  There was one item on my win...

Photo by Laura Castañón It was a sunny Sunday morning in Danvers, MA. The second full day of the Boston Sea Rovers convention was about to get underway. Sea Rovers is the world's longest-running dive show, with 2026 being the 72nd year. And I was the first speaker on the morning schedule.   WHOI's Dive Safety Officer, Kim Malkoski , is also the President of Boston Sea Rovers. The connection has been mutually beneficial, especially this year, when a dedicated WHOI session at the Sea Rovers convention put our research center stage. I got to the presentation room plenty early, connected my laptop to the room's A/V system, and tested my slides. Show time. My presentation focused on shipwrecks, my favorite marine habitats. I knew the audience would be interested in hearing about shipwreck research, too. Recreational divers love learning about historical sites and seeing footage of the diverse animals that call them home. In fact, Sea Rovers presentations are a great way to learn...

One of my greatest pleasures as a scientist and mentor is helping others succeed. For me, time spent advising young students pays dividends both in discoveries made and in personal growth of my lab members. My intern, Olivia, is a shining example of what a determined young scientist can achieve.  Olivia Quintin in the Fisher-Reid lab at Bridgewater State. Photo by Carly McMahon. Olivia is a student at Bridgewater State University, just about an hour's drive from Woods Hole. She approached me about a year ago to inquire about internships, and I was able to bring her into my lab through WHOI's Guest Student program. She spent her summer analyzing an image dataset I had collected in Palau. By identifying the corals that live on shipwrecks, airplanes, and naturally-occurring coral reefs, we could tell how maritime heritage structures impact biodiversity in coral reef environments. The project was very successful, and  we submitted a paper for publication based on Olivia's data...

The frozen Woods Hole harbor at sunset Friends, it has been a weird winter on Cape Cod. For the third time in a month, I am watching out the window of my house, waiting for the arrival of predicted snow. This time, the forecast shows Cape Cod getting almost 3 feet of the white stuff. It will be wet, heavy, and hard to remove. I won't be able to leave the house for days.  The harbor in Woods Hole froze over this winter. Ice floes cover the sea surface near WHOI's pier, blocking in R/V Neil Armstrong . At just 41 N, Woods Hole is not a place that freezes over often - at least not in this century. The winter of 2026 has so far been exceptionally cold and snowy.  In the midst of this long, cold winter, I am busy with science - writing proposals , developing ideas , and revising papers. Late last fall, I submitted a swath of manuscripts for publication, to share my research results with the world. Now that a few months have passed, each respective journal has reviewed my work and...

A figure that I made with my collaborator, Irina, showing where Metridium lives in the NW Atlantic. Colors on the map show average bottom temperature, and shipwrecks  <17C are black dots. The surrounding pictures are frame grabs I took from dive videos on YouTube.  Friends, it is proposal season! This year, I have deadline stacked on top of deadline, and every day brings a new effort to keep my lab funded through the next few years. I'm kind of obsessed with an anemone called Metridium senile right now. It's very common on shipwrecks in the North Atlantic, and I just have to figure out why.  I hypothesized that Metridium larvae were highly variable - some only swam for a short amount of time, others swam for longer, and that meant that a few larvae could disperse much farther than their siblings. To test this hypothesis, I collected adult anemones from a local jetty , cultured their larvae in the lab, and measured as many things as I could - their size, shape, buo...

It's been a while since I wrote a post at the end of a work day . Sometimes the words just come . They sizzle in my head all day, then bubble to a boil until I let them vent through my fingertips. Sometimes I can almost hear the steam.  We are exactly 16 days into the Year of our Lord 2026, and the days just keep on coming. Most of the time on this blog, I tell you about the highlights of my job - the publications , the discoveries , the thrills and surprises , the news coverage , the literal mountaintop experiences . I have an amazing life. But not every day is an epic adventure in ocean science . Most days, I just answer emails.  Today was one of those days. I biked to work , sat at my desk, and weeded through the things that needed doing. Friends, if you'll indulge me, let's take a moment to pause and appreciate all the little things  that constitute the process of science - not the big moments, but the everyday tasks. They are no less important, for sure.  Pre...