Meyer-Kaiser lab

I had exactly one free day between the end of the Ocean Outlook conference and my flight home. How I was going to spend it was never in question. When you have a free day in Norway, you go on a hike.  Some of Ulriken's 1333 stairs. There's a mountain right outside of Bergen called Ulriken, which is a super common hike for locals and tourists alike. You can take a cable car to the top, or you can hike it. If you're crazy, you can jog up Ulriken, and the internet warned me I would see some locals doing so. It was not an exaggeration. I got passed by so many people running up the mountain. Norwegians are insane.  My plan was to summit Ulriken, then follow the trail across to Bergen's other (smaller) mountain peak, Fløyen. Based on information online, it seemed like it should take me 1 hour to reach the summit and another 4 hours to hike across. That's exactly the length of hike I was looking for, so I packed my bag and set off.  When you start up Ulriken, you have a f

Way back in the day, as the story goes, a WHOI scientist got approached by a scientist from the University of Bergen. The Bergen scientist was looking for advice on a particular topic that the WHOI scientist was an expert in, so they started talking. The more the conversation went on, the more they realized how much their research, their institutions, and even their towns had in common. Both Woods Hole and Bergen have multiple research institutions all focused on the ocean. A lot of the research in both cities focuses on the North Atlantic, including environmental impacts of things like climate change and pollutants. The two scientists - one American, one Norwegian - decided that researchers in their respective cities should get together once a year to discuss their shared interests in a conference, and Ocean Outlook was born.  The conference took a break during covid (like everything else), but thanks to our Norwegian friends, Ocean Outlook is back at it this year! I was very excited

The timing for this trip could not have been more perfect. Recently, my student, Kharis, has been working to identify small larvae collected on two expeditions in the Fram Strait. She's had her fair share of struggles with the process, including the realization that specimens she labeled as the same morphotype in the field are actually multiple different species. We're making it through the dataset - slowly. A challenge that's come up recently is that a number of her morphotypes don't match to any species in a public database. Our sequences are clean - but nobody has sequenced that particular species before. We have perfect data and no match. It's incredibly frustrating.  One particularly challenging group is the polychaetes , or segmented worms. Not many people in the world care about polychaetes (trust me, they should care ), so it's an understudied group. Kharis asked a colleague for advice on who might have a lot of polychaete sequences we could use as a

A cute harbor in Bergen. Yes, the guys on the bottom left are about to jump into the water.  The Norwegian Parliament just authorized a new area for seafloor mining.  These protest posters were visible all over town. I was waiting for the aquarium to open when this adorable, well-cared-for cat approached me. I reached out my hand to pet him, and 2 seconds later, he climbed up my arm onto my backpack. For a few minutes, I was stuck there, not wanting to move and disturb the resting feline. Pretty soon, some school groups started showing up, and kids were asking if they could pet him. I had to find the words in Norwegian to explain that this is not my cat.  Sea lions at the Bergen Aquarium Seen in Bergen's city center Colorful row houses in Bergen's city center

Years ago, when I was still a graduate student, I had a conversation with one of my mentors about burnout. He dutifully encouraged me to have a healthy work-life balance, take vacations, live my life, and all that good stuff. Then he turned the question on me: "What do you do to combat burnout?"  I thought for a second and then answered as honestly as I could: "I move to Europe."  It's true. After an intense undergraduate experience, I knew I needed a break and moved to Germany. That year ended up being the most significant experience of my life to that point. I delved deeply into German culture, explored a new field of research, and returned to the States a different person. A few years later, when I was on the brink of burnout in grad school, I took a fellowship in Norway . The 6 months I spent in Stavanger refreshed me , calmed me, connected me with a community , and forever transformed the way I approach science. Not only have my two long-term European expe

A hydromedusa (top), cerinula larva (middle), and claim (bottom). Photos by Declan Lane. Recently, two of my high school interns asked for a lesson. We have been working for months on sorting plankton from the Arctic, but all these samples are preserved in ethanol. They don't move. They just hang there in the liquid, begging to be sorted. My interns wondered what it was like to sort live plankton instead.  Of course I was happy to show them. We grabbed a plankton net from my lab, dragged it through the water off the dock in Eel Pond, and looked at the sample together under the microscopes. It is so satisfying for me to  introduce new  students to science - I love guiding their curiosity, listening to their exclamations, and showing them the incredible diversity in the ocean.  The sample we collected happened to be full of medusae. If you've heard the word "medusa" before, it was probably in context of Greek mythology, but the woman with snakes for hair is not what

A 360-degree sunset in mid-afternoon. Photo by Angela Meyer. If you have been anywhere in North America this week, you heard about the solar eclipse. Hotel rooms and Airbnbs in the path of totality were booked to capacity. Eclipse glasses were a hot commodity. Crowds gathered in parks yesterday afternoon for "watch parties." The only way to not hear about the solar eclipse was to hide under a rock.  For those experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime event, I get it. A solar eclipse is a big deal. Here in Woods Hole, we had 91% occlusion, which was pretty impressive. Ambient light was certainly dimmer than I would have expected for 3 pm. It was strange to step outside yesterday and feel the cool air in mid-afternoon. What's even stranger is that this is my third solar eclipse in 4 years - I've seen partial eclipses during field work in the high Arctic and Palau . I'll add this one to the list.  Total solar eclipse. Photo by Angela Meyer. My parents were in the path of t

I donned my nitrile gloves, wiped down the lab bench with ethanol, and opened my freezer. One hundred and eighty coral samples stared me in the face. Each one rested quietly in its small ethanol tube. They had no idea what was about to happen to them, but I did. The battle belonged to me. Friends, I have spent a lot of time extracting DNA from Porites lobata . I mean, a lot of time. So much time. I started with a round of 90 samples in 2019 . That was followed by another round of 90 in late 2021 . Don't forget about the 150 samples I did in 2022 , either. I couldn't even tell you at this point how much time I've spent extracting DNA. The process is pretty repetitive, to the point that I treat it like a form of meditation .  Take a wild guess what I've been doing this week. Yep, extracting DNA from Porites lobata . This time, the corals in my dataset are parents that contributed offspring to our experiments last spring. We did a ton of experiments - to the point that it

I had a pretty entertaining conversation with Calvin this morning. We were commiserating about a particularly complex proposal. The thing is nasty. It has sub-awards, it has in-kind, it has cost-sharing, it has about 15 different partners. Calvin described it as a menacing, slimy, Hydra monster of a proposal.  I shrugged. "Whatever; I have a sword."  Calvin laughed out loud.  Photogrammetric model of a fishing net on the Portland bow. Credit: Marine Imaging  Technologies.  For all the times I've prided myself on playing scientific defense , not offence, I must admit there are times when I need a sword - or at least an offensive strategy. How do you get ahead of a problem? How do you slay a 3-headed monster?  The proposal itself is actually the closest I'll ever come to playing offence: prevention. We're proposing to partner with stakeholders across Massachusetts to prevent future entanglements of fishing gear on shipwrecks. You know what I'm talking about - m

Some of the common coral genera in our study "Every project starts out a hairy beast." - I wrote this in a text to a friend today  It is a sunny Friday in Woods Hole, and I am feeling victorious. Recently, I've been working on a paper about recruitment dynamics of corals in Palau. You know - the project that had me so obsessed with finding juvenile corals for 5 years. I had such a hard time getting baby corals to settle on tiles that I gave up and started looking for them on the reef. Turns out my camera was a much more effective tool for finding small juveniles than the tiles I had tried. Over the course of 3 years, my team collected thousands of images . Every single one of them had to be identified   to at least genus . The project was one giant, hairy beast.  When I finally took a look at the final data, it was messy . There were significant differences all over that dataset - between adults and juveniles, between juveniles in the photos and recruits on the tiles, b

Beignets at Cafe du Monde! You know those "Three Perfect Days" ads they have on airplanes? They play on the little screens in the seat backs while you're boarding. Every one starts with scenery of a beautiful destination that the airline serves, followed by suggestions for what to do while you're there. There are exactly three suggestions, corresponding to three days on the ground.  I have the same thought about every "Three Perfect Days" ad: that's not enough to do for three days. You could do every suggested activity in a single day. Maybe a day and a half. I tell you what, friends, if there was ever a travel planner who agreed with me, her name is Betsy. She is my husband's cousin, and she lives with her family in Louisiana. As soon as Ocean Sciences ended, I switched into Aunt Mode (I guess technically First-Cousin-By-Marriage Mode) and spent the weekend with Betsy's family.  It was 1.5  perfect  days. We met for dinner. We went to the aquari

Probably the most exciting part of my week at Ocean Sciences was getting invited to a press event. The American Geophysical Union, the ginormous professional society behind Ocean Sciences, organizes these roundtable discussions between certain scientists and reporters at every conference. Each scientist gets a few minutes to explain their research, and then the floor opens for anyone to ask questions. Usually, the moderator is the one who asks the most questions, but the goal is to keep the conversation flowing. The roundtables are recorded and posted online so anyone can watch them later.  A screenshot from the roundtable recording - here, I'm talking about a recent project in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to yours truly, panelists in my roundtable included Melanie Damor, an archaeologist with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and Nathan Figueredo, a student at Louisiana State University. Our research was very complementary, so it turned into a great discussion. If you'

"You should go to Ocean Sciences" Giving my presentation. Photo by Johanna Weston. - my mentoring committee, every time we've met over the last 4 years I'm a small town girl. I don't do crowds. So when my mentoring committee pushed me to present at a conference with 5,000 participants, I pushed back. Not my speed, I told them.  Here's the thing: Ocean Sciences is a hub. It's not just other scientists who show up here; program officers from all the major funding agencies show up. Reporters. Publishers. People who I would be lucky to connect with.  So I came. I navigated the crowd. I gave my presentation - and guess what, I even got invited to participate in a press event. I attended town hall meetings with some of the major funding agencies. I connected with potential new colleagues, and I ran into multiple people who I hadn't seen in years. Yes, mentoring committee, you were right. I'm glad I came.  WHOI students and faculty at the Audubon Aquarium

My work station for the day (WHOI is closed for inclement weather). Right now, I am sitting cross-legged on a semi-circular orange armchair. Dark wood panels sandwich me on two walls, while the other two hold large glass windows to the outside world. It's getting white out there. Fat, wet flakes of snow started falling a few hours ago, and it shows no sign of stopping.  To my right, a four-log fire provides cozy, comforting heat to the dark-paneled den. My husband clacks on a keyboard behind me, and to my left, our overgrown floof of a dog naps on the floor. It is winter in New England.  If you asked me about coral reefs right now, I might not even know what you're talking about. As far as I'm concerned, the world is white and cold, like the ice planet Hoth. All I want in the world is my family and this fire. What are the tropics? From my orange armchair, the hot, humid latitudes feel a galaxy away.  Nevertheless, I was roused from my cozy winter stupor by an email today. A

Guest blog post by postdoc Johanna Weston Today, I am coming to you from the Central East Pacific near 9°50’ North. I am  on board R/V Atlantis  along the East Pacific Rise as part of an NSF-funded cruise to study the biodiversity of inactive sulfide vents. Or, as we are saying – Life After Vents. The East Pacific Rise (EPR) is a mid-ocean rise at a divergent tectonic plate boundary and a fast-spreading mid-ocean ridge . Along this axis, there is a lot of hydrothermal venting activity. However, this venting is ultimately transient, leaving only the sulfide mineral-rich deposits after the fluid flow stops. These inactive sulfides are beautiful and distinct features on the seafloor. They aren't teeming with the iconic life present on active vents, but they are not devoid of life either. I spent January and February on a team, led by Dr. Lauren Mullineaux from WHOI and Dr. Jason Sylvan from Texas A&M, exploring some inactive sulfides. We are using the human-occupied submers

"Well, you know, I'm a physicist, so I thought about stuff...I wrote some of it down." - the TV show The Big Bang Theory Every scientist has a backlog of papers they want to write. Every. Single. One. In fact, for as much as I adore The Big Bang Theory , the #1 thing that show gets wrong is how much free time the characters have. If the show were realistic, they would never have gaps between projects. Ever. Sheldon and Leonard would spend every episode in meetings, writing proposals, managing budgets, mentoring students, and desperately, hopelessly scraping together a few minutes to write papers here and there.  Sometimes, you just have to be selfish. Sometimes, you just have to shut your office door and work. Or better yet, don't work at the office so nobody can find you.  I'm not pointing any fingers here, but there may be a certain scientist working at an undisclosed off-campus location today. She might have decided to work remotely for personal reasons, but th

Man, it was a fun day it the lab yesterday. Kharis, Sarah, and I spent the whole morning working on a project together, and we managed to make great progress.  Recently, Kharis has been struggling to identify larvae from the Arctic. Don't get me wrong - we have a good methodology , thanks to a few years of struggling and about 6 months of Johanna troubleshooting. We can reliably get good-quality sequences from our specimens now. The DNA was not the problem (for once). Kharis's struggle has been morphology. She sorted all her larvae into categories based on how they looked in the field. It's a strategy I taught her - sort everything live, photograph and preserve the specimens, then sequence them back in the lab. By sorting up-front, you can save yourself a lot of time and just sequence a few representatives of each morphotype once you're home. If the sequences for those representatives line up, you have a reliable identification for the morphotype.  If.  See, that'

Hollis joined the lab through his school's  mentorship program.  Friends, I want to tell you about something magical that's happening in our lab right now. As you know, I am passionate about mentoring the next generation of scientists. It's why I've taken on a PhD student, a postdoc, and two summer undergraduates at WHOI. If my lab was at a standard university with all sorts of students running around, I would be the professor who proudly offered research opportunities to anyone who wanted the experience. Woods Hole is decidedly short on undergrads, but what we do have are high school students hungry for a chance.  One student is doing his science fair project under my lab's mentorship for the second year in a row. Two students who did internships with us last year asked if they could come back to keep learning. I also recently signed up for the mentorship program through a high school on Martha's Vineyard and got a fantastic new lab member . Just this week, tw