Meyer-Kaiser lab

My grad student, Kharis, braiding rope for a  bridle to deploy equipment in the ocean. "You know, if you had a male grad student, they would not know how to do this," my grad student observed smugly. She was draped in yellow rope, braiding with her hands and keeping the strands from tangling with her feet. She looked like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold. I smiled and shook my head. She was right - that level of scientific arts and crafts was distinctly female.  In another corner of the lab, I had my own straw-based alchemy experiment going on. CATAIN 's electronic entrails were sprawled out on the bench top, with cords of every imaginable kind attached to ports in the camera's Raspberry Pi computer. There was HDMI, ethernet, USB, a small white jumper, a 6-prong connector with 3 of the prongs purposefully removed, and little hook-shaped terminals that were way too delicate for my liking. If I may continue the Rumpelstiltskin metaphor, I was the princess, sitt...

The agenda for today's session on biofouling This week, I was invited to speak at an international session of the Marine Science and Education conference. The conference is held every year in Moscow, but the past two years have included a hybrid approach that allows for foreign participation over Zoom.  I presented results of a recent experiment on biofouling organisms in the Arctic and listened to speakers from the UK, Belgium, and Russia discuss their own work. One thing that occurred to all of us was the striking similarities in our experience. Each of us had independently come up with a design for plastic panels to study recruitment of biofouling organisms. We had shared experiences interacting with industrial partners and gaining access to data. We even worked on some of the same species in environments as far apart as the North Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk.  Fouling communities are fascinating to me because by definition, they are not supposed to exist. Human activities i...

This is a slide I use in a lot of my presentations, which shows the basic scheme for benthic invertebrate life-histories that I study. Late last week, I eased myself back into work mode with a virtual visit to the University of New Brunswick Saint John. A good friend of mine from postdoc days, Cassidy , is a professor up there now, and she invited me to speak to her department.  It was an absolute delight. I gave a presentation on some of my recent Arctic research - how larvae disperse at high latitudes, where they end up, how they recruit, and what we can expect as climate change warms the polar regions. It's always weird talking to a computer screen instead of an auditorium, but I got into a groove and spoke for about 45 minutes. By far, the best part of the day was after my presentation was finished. Multiple labs had signed up for personal meetings with me, so I spent the rest of the day in virtual chats about research. One of the postdocs who studies Arctic charr had a lot in ...

We were the first ones in the parking lot - well, after the mosquitoes. It is buggy at Peacock. Thankfully, we had anti-insect incense. Soon enough, we were in the water and shielded from the biting terrestrial invertebrates.  The entrance to Peacock is the worst part of the whole cave. You either have to go head-first straight down or turn sideways and pull yourself across the rocks with your hands. I opted for the latter. I could hear my spare tanks clink against the limestone and feel the pressure increase in my ears as I descended. After about a minute, I reached the flat, rocky floor and re-joined my buddies near the sign.  This sign appears at the entrance to every submerged cave in  Florida to discourage untrained divers from entering the cave. The same sign is mounted at the entrance to every submerged cave in Florida, and it's purposefully dramatic. I can't imagine why someone without cave training would ever wriggle their way down here, but apparently some do. ...

I set my rebreather up on a picnic table to begin preparing it for the dive. A white pickup truck pulled into the parking lot, and two men stepped out. I immediately recognized them - we had seen them at a different dive site a few days ago. It's a small community down here.  Map of Eagle's Nest. With my gear all ready to go, I stepped into the pond and began clipping tanks to myself. Small black fish swam near the surface. Next to me, my husband did the same. "Can you believe it's going to take us 21 tanks to do this dive?" he asked. I paused. Three people, two rebreather tanks, one suit inflator tank, two trimix bailouts, and two decompression gases each - three times seven is 21. He was right. Of course, if everything went well, we'd only ever touch three each. The other four were back-ups.  I swam to the center of the pond and watched as my dive instructor made himself horizontal and descended through a hole in the limestone. He looked exactly like a sky d...

I'm currently on vacation in central Florida and spending my days diving in freshwater caves. Diving is such a good way to get into nature. Here are some of the animals we've seen.  A pelican hanging around near a dive shop. This giant Eastern lubber grasshopper ( Romalea guttata ) was hanging out  in the front yard of the house we're renting. He was about the size of my  index finger - HUGE. This little cutie liked to hang around the parking lot at  a dive site. Snails like this live in the pond above the Eagle's Nest cave.  I identified this one as Viviparus georgianus . Snails in the  genus Viviparus give birth to live young - crazy! This snail was chilling in the middle of the road as we pulled away from Eagle's Nest. Yes, that is an alligator. Yes, it was at a dive site.  No, we did not get in the water. 

The entrance to Ginnie Springs My body was parallel to the river bed as my feet propelled me forward. If I reached up, I could touch the surface, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to go down, not up.  We rounded a corner and approached a giant hole in the river bed. Hundreds of bubbles emerged through the limestone - the exhalations of other divers being expelled from the cavern below. My heart pounded harder as we drew near to the entrance. This was the cave at Ginnie Springs. I followed my team mates down through the hole and found the thick, braided golden-yellow rope that marked the route into the cave. Already I could feel the current in my face. As the water rushed past, I got low to the limestone floor and frog-kicked against the flow, more thankful than ever that my gear was streamlined. Ahead of me, my instructor had pulled out of the stream and tucked himself behind a rock wall. He gestured that I should do the same. We had passed through the Eye. One by one, we pulled out f...