Meyer-Kaiser lab

My new intern, Olivia, and my dog, Kraken, look on as I check the ROV video feed.  Friends, it is a good day when I get to spend some of my work time outside! This week, I am preparing for summer research on a scallop fishing boat . A key tool for data collection is my lab's small remotely-operated vehicle  (ROV) - I'll use it to record videos from the seafloor to estimate the density and size distribution of scallops at each of my sampling stations. The last time our lab's ROV was used, it was in the Arctic. Kharis, my graduate student, used the ROV to recover our beloved settlement camera, CATAIN . Since being in the Arctic with Kharis, our ROV has been disassembled and shipped across the world. I needed to set up the vehicle and make sure it was working before heading out to sea myself. I took the ROV pieces out their respective boxes one by one. Everything came flooding back - part names, how they fit together, the proper order of operations. I'm no engineer, but ...

Friends, today, a new paper describing results of my lab's research has been published in The Biological Bulletin ! This paper stems from the trip to Svalbard that my grad student, Kharis, and I made in January 2023. At 79 N, we experienced 24-hour darkness while collecting larvae. This period of the year is called the polar night and has a profound impact on the marine ecosystem. Contrary to expectations, we found a high diversity of larvae during the polar night. Our experiments showed that some larvae were even actively feeding or competent to settle. The polar night is an active period! This research sparked a lot of questions about adaptations of the species we found to extreme environmental conditions. I am proud of the study that Kharis and I did!  You can read our paper here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/736174 For a more accessible explanation of our research, check out this episode of Changing Seas :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxKs0AHdTDU ...

Hollis and me Friends, I have a genuine question for you: how in the world is it June? Every single month in 2025 seems to go faster than the last. I cannot wrap my head around it already being summer.  Recently, I celebrated a milestone for an intern in my lab. Hollis joined the lab through his high school's mentorship program, and he's been with us for the last two years. In that time, Hollis has definitely grown - he has worked on three different projects, become the best Pluteus Finder I've ever known, and even helped me design a method for separating tiny scallops from the rest of a plankton sample. More recently, I got to teach Hollis how to extract DNA from larvae. He's become an integral part of the team.  Every year, the mentors and mentees gather for a Mentorship Luncheon at Hollis's school to share what they have achieved together. I took the ferry to the Vineyard and then caught a ride with another mentor to the school. The Luncheon is a really mean...

The Thursday Evening Club was started by a physician named John Collins Warren - founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital, president of the American Medical Association, Dean of Harvard Medical School, and the first surgeon to use anesthesia on a patient. One one night in 1846, Warren suggested to his friends that they begin a weekly meeting of gentlemen "for social and scientific conversation," and the club was born. In the early days, presentations covered topics including “crystallization by clay; petrifaction by iron; the beauty of trees; and decomposition of lead water pipes.” Warren was obsessed with animal skeletons and regularly entertained participants with his collections, including mammoth and mastodon bones and a zeuglodon (an extinct whale).  Ready for my presentation to the Thursday Evening Club. Photo by Bridget Flynn. The Club's norms have shifted slowly over time and under the direction of its successive presidents. Meetings are now four times per ye...

"Summer people; some are not." - Graffiti in Woods Hole, MA Friends, it is that time of year again. Traffic in town picked up around Easter, and it has not gone back down. Water Street in Woods Hole has more pedestrians than it did a month ago. The bakeries and coffee shops have lines stretching to their doors. It is getting to be...(I shudder at the thought)...summer.  Yes, summers on Cape Cod are absolutely insane. Our population approximately doubles, between seasonal residents moving into their summer homes and tourists flocking to the beaches. The streets are packed, the shops are overrun, and if you want to eat at a restaurant - forget it.   As I watch the world around me become busier by the day, I must contemplate my own summer plans. This summer was supposed to be a quiet one - I had no major field work scheduled, just a couple days on a scallop boat. I was supposed to stay home, do my job like normal, and maybe even enjoy myself. It was going to feel pretty weir...

I love telling others about my research. You might have figured that from my >1,000 posts on this science-focused blog, but just in case, I'll say it again. I love telling others about my research.  The title slide from my presentation My trip to Dallas was awesome because I spent basically the whole time talking to others about my work. After a delightful visit with friends, I was the featured speaker for a WHOI Chapter Event. The Chapters are groups of WHOI supporters in various cities around the country. Back in January, I had the pleasure of speaking to the New York Chapter . This time, I got to introduce myself to WHOI supporters in Dallas.  We gathered in a private room at an uptown restaurant. The Dallas chapter had a very different feel than the crowd in New York - it was a more intimate group, and almost all the participants knew each other already. The cocktail hour felt like a family reunion. Once everyone had settled into their seats and placed their dinner or...

I stepped out of the airport and located Betsy's car. Based on the use of first-person singular in her text messages, I assumed Betsy had come alone, but there turned out to be two Baldwins in the car. 9-year-old Lelia stepped out onto the curb and gave me a hearty hug around my waist. She bounced with excitement. I was glad to see her too.  Betsy, Lelia, me, and Everly at the Dallas Children's Theater. The girls decided to make funny faces! A few minutes of highways and stoplights later, we arrived at a public park. 12-year-old Everly was just finishing up the week's discussion with her book club. I got a hug from her, and then we compared outfits. Everly had worn her NASA shirt for me; I had worn a dress with marine animals on it for her. We found the girls' father and Betsy's husband, Zac, in the park, and the gang was all together! Four Baldwins and one Meyer-Kaiser. Total count: 5 nerds.  I adore the Baldwins , and it's pretty clear the feeling is mutual. T...