Meyer-Kaiser lab

The first thing I noticed were the nets. As WHOI's Falcon ROV flew across the seafloor towards a bright sonar target, a tangled mass of fishing net appeared in our camera's view.  A fishing net on the stern of Quest "Oh, it's a net!" came the exclamation from the back of the room. We saw the nets before we even saw the wreck. They were everywhere - on the sediment, draped over the hull, coiled on the deck. Our target shipwreck, Quest , was absolutely covered in fishing nets.  My mind flashed back to 2020. That year, I was the chief scientist for a team working in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary . We extensively documented the passenger steamship Portland , which had three entangled fishing nets. In fact, my team's research showed that  two new nets had impacted the wreck between 2009 and 2019. I remember the surprise of finding those nets. I remember the concern my team felt for the ROV and the careful planning we undertook to prevent entanglement. ...

Seen near St. Anthony's, Newfoundland "I love this country so much, it's so beautiful!" Riley bounced a few times on his toes as he declared his love for Canada. I had to admit - St. Anthony's, Newfoundland, was a particularly impressive spot. From the bow of R/V Atlantis , we could see limestone cliffs rising from the sea. A lighthouse perched atop the rocks warned vessels to keep their distance. Beside the lighthouse was a small cluster of houses nestled in a valley. With the sun shining on a bright blue sea, the scene looked like a sleepy storybook fishing village. Patches of snow rested on some hillcrests, even though it was July. I imagined the residents of St. Anthony's hiking to the tops of those hills each weekend - what a privilege that must be.  Many of the participants aboard Atlantis have memories of St. Anthony's. Two years ago, when the Royal Canadian Geographic Society (RCGS) launched an expedition to find Quest with side-scan sonar , they...

We gathered in the Hydro lab. This room, located on the aft port side of R/V Atlantis , is usually home base for robotics teams. The Alvin team uses it for desk work, and during my last Atlantis cruise in 2015, the team for the Sentry autonomous vehicle set up their equipment here. On AT52, my current expedition, the Hydro lab is home base for the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) team.  We're using a small ROV - a tethered robotic vehicle - to survey our two target shipwrecks, Quest and Terra Nova . The ROV can stay on the seafloor for longer than Alvin , and the video feed can be live-streamed all over the ship for everyone to see. The two vehicles - one manned, the other unmanned - perfectly complement one another.  Dwight (chief scientist), Andy, and Sam (ROV team) during the ROV test dive As we steamed north past Nova Scotia, we paused to conduct a test dive with the ROV. The vehicle we're using has completed numerous missions as part of WHOI's Ocean Observing Initia...

I rounded the corner, and the wind hit me - literally. The force of the air pressing into my chest felt like I had walked straight into a brick wall. I stumbled backward and grabbed the railing. Any sane person would have turned back, walked back down the stairs, and retreated inside. But I am not a sane person.  I pressed forward, one steel-toed boot step at a time. On R/V Atlantis , scientists are allowed on the bow - and I was determined to take full advantage of that access. I was practicing my ritual, breaking up long periods of laptop work by stepping outside, no matter the weather. It was important to me to experience the environment and remember where I am on planet Earth. The motion of the ship intensified as I marched determinedly forward. The closer I got to my destination, the more I could feel the bow's upward swing with each wave. Then a rogue wave splashed against the side of the vessel, and I was sprayed with chilled seawater. I laughed - my old friend was saying he...

"I feel like I'm visiting family!" Beverly exclaimed as she hugged me. I returned her embrace whole-heartedly, because I felt the same.  After a second, I pulled back and met her eyes, hands still on her shoulders. "Right?!"  I had never met Beverly in person, but we felt like old, close friends. We were introduced a few years ago by a mutual collaborator, archaeologist Calvin Mires. We hit it off instantly over Zoom and developed a research proposal to submit together. Alas, the funding gods would not see us collaborate, because the proposal was declined. But we stayed in touch nonetheless.  Beverly lives in Israel. Her research uses geological methods - mostly sediment cores - to answer archaeological questions. Beverly is also obsessed with tsunamis. Any time she takes a sediment core, she can tell instantly if there was a tsunami in the study site's geological history. "Tsunami deposits," which consist of large rocks and shells, jump out of the...

Friends, time is a funny thing. Sometimes, it seems to crawl along, but other times, it flies past me with a nearly-audible whoosh. The past few weeks have been a waterfall of events - and then it was July.  Our dive site, Outer Brewster island I want to highlight two events. First, I went SCUBA diving with a friend in Boston Harbor. It was so good to get in the water again, and trust me, my trim was much better this time. Another friend had actually emailed me to ask for a few sea stars, so I spent part of my dive gathering specimens off the seafloor for her. The sea stars are safe in my freezer now, waiting for shipment to her lab. Soon, they will contribute to research! Another key part of my summer has been preparing for my scallop project . The last two years, I have gone out on scallop fishing boats to collect samples . This year, my schedule was full enough that I didn't go out to sea myself - but I still had to do all the prep work. I spent a few days gathering all the sa...

Friends, this week has been a big one for my lab. Another paper reporting the results of my research has been published, and I am overjoyed. This most recent paper has been published in the highest-ranking scientific journal in the world, Nature .  What it looked like stepping out of the helicopter on an  iceberg laden with dropstones. Photo from 2021.  The story begins in 2021 with the discovery of an iceberg in eastern Greenland carrying thousands of dark black rocks. Colleagues and I flew to the iceberg from R/V Polarstern with a helicopter to investigate. Our discovery inspired a whole series of analyses that have taken the last 5 years to complete.  Along the way, we discovered that the iceberg was not unique. In fact, we found that there was a stark 5x increase in iceberg sightings in the Fram Strait beginning in 2000. Most of those icebergs originated in northeast Greenland or northern Russia, where glaciers have lost mass and calved off increasing numbers o...