Meyer-Kaiser lab

Coming home from an expedition is always hard. It feels like you've been on another planet , or that your whole time at sea was just a really good dream. The people you've spent every waking minute with for a whole month are suddenly gone . It helps if you have a few days to decompress before settling back into normal life .  Unfortunately, I did not have a few days. I went straight from Tromsø, Norway to my home in Massachusetts, slept, and went to work the next day. I had important things to attend to.  Two of the pluteus larvae that Hollis found Important things - like my intern, Hollis. The last time I saw him, he had blue hair , but it was black when he arrived in the lab this time. He had some new life updates to share with me, and I was very excited to listen. Admittedly, conversations with Hollis sometimes involve me learning new vocabulary so I can keep up with the ever-evolving modern lingo. Hollis also peppered me with questions about my Arctic trip - larvae, polar

Sea ice! Deploying the hand net. Photo by Kyra Marie Böckmann The CTD descending to the water. Our hand net deployments corresponded with the CTD casts.  Photo by Johanna Weston. In the ROV van during my dive. Photo by Johanna Weston. Waiting for the ROV recovery with Melanie and Lydia. Photo by Melanie Bergmann. ROV Kiel 6000 coming on board Polarstern after a dive. One of the "dragon amphipods" collected during my ROV dive.  Photo by Johanna Weston. We got close enough to Svalbard that we could actually see land! A puffin flying around the ship. Photo by Lydia Schmidt.

I stood in the so-called "working hallway" on Polarstern 's main deck. The doors to outside were wide open, and the cold Arctic air surrounded me. Two technicians used the ship's built-in tracked winch system to lift and move the CTD onto the main deck. It was a familiar procedure. As soon as that CTD was in the water, I would get my next larval sample.  Another researcher, Peter, walked up and stood next to me. I nodded a greeting. He nodded back and pointed to the CTD.  "This is my extra sausage," he said in German.  "Good for you!" I responded, giggling a little inside. It's true - things have gone well enough this trip that we've barely had to cancel anything. What cancellations we did have were because of ice conditions, not equipment malfunction. The chief scientist was even able to honor requests for extra samples toward the end of the expedition. If this was an American ship, Peter might have told me that the CTD was the icing on hi

My experiment had to wait 5 years for me to return, but it was not the only patient experiment in the HAUSGARTEN this year. My friend and collaborator, Melanie, started an experiment of her own in 2015 to figure out how plastic litter impacts deep-sea sponges. After 9 years, she was finally able to finish the experiment.  An anemone on the base of Melanie's experiment. I volunteered to help Melanie during her ROV dive by keeping notes. The ROV team has a specialized system that automatically time-stamps and georeferences every observation during the dive. A dedicated laptop in the ROV control van and a second one in the winch control room are used for data logging. We don't want to miss anything that happens on the seafloor.  As I watched the video feed from Melanie's dive, I started to notice something unexpected. Small white lines appeared on many of the plastic pieces in her experiment. Looking closely, I realized they were worm tubes! The worms must have settled on the

It has been 5 years.  Back in 2019, I started a series of experiments at a station in the HAUSGARTEN . We call the station "Senke," but that's actually a misnomer. "Senke" is German for "depression." There is a depression in the seafloor, sure, but right next to the depression is a giant rocky reef. And I go to Senke for the reef.  It's been my mission for the last several years to understand the assembly of hard-bottom communities in the Arctic deep sea. How are new stones colonized? Who arrives first? Where do the larvae come from? Ever since an 18-year experiment showed that Arctic communities take decades to form, I have wanted to dig into that process.  One of my larval traps, successfully opened and even covered with life! If you want to understand hard-bottom communities, Senke is the ideal study site. It has bedrock and boulders and is covered in sponges like you wouldn't believe. I find it fascinating and incredibly beautiful. It is m

The past few days, we have sampled at the northern HAUSGARTEN stations. Honestly, it feels a bit weird to say "the northern stations" because, well, we're in the Arctic. Every station is a northern station in a way. But further north we went, to nearly 80 N.  Johanna deploying our larval net while I  manage the line.  The ice at the northern stations is different from East Greenland. It's thinner, more delicate, ridden with holes and so, so blue. From the ship, you can watch the ice floes crack and break under the strain of the hull. They act like soft cotton compared to Polarstern 's sturdy steel. As we drive between stations, the ice floes make the ship's motion bumpy, like so many pot holes on an uneven country road. If East Greenland ice is a deep January freeze, the northern HAUSGARTEN stations are a slushy day in late March.  The ice edge is one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, at least for a short time. Each spring, as the ice begins to melt,

Admittedly, one of the reasons I study marine invertebrate larvae is because I find them beautiful. I just have to share some of the amazing specimens we collected at HG-I. All photos were taken using a compound microscope at 50 - 100x magnification by myself and Johanna Weston. We called this snail "black spot," but I think he's cuter than the ominous name suggests. Not actually sure who this is, but it's clearly an embryo in the act of dividing into multiple cells! A pluteus larva of the brittle star Ophiopholis aculeata I kept calling these baby clams "tiny, stupid bivalves" because they're challenging to identify and it was 2 am. Turns out, Johanna made that the official morphotype name in our data sheet! A cyprid larva of the barnacle Balanus balanus . Not sure what species this is, but we called it "embryo shiny."

We arrived at station HG-I, in the eastern Fram Strait, at 9 pm. Our icy surroundings had been replaced by open water as we steamed eastward, and the air was a balmy 5 C. I barely needed my second jacket to step outside.  A sample at 9 pm isn't too bad. Research operations on Polarstern take place 24 hours a day, so sometimes the schedule has me sampling in the middle of the night. Everybody takes their turn at the night shift - that's just how it is. We'll sort this sample, I thought, then get some sleep and rise for our next sample in the morning.  Yeah, not so much.  The HG-I sample was our most diverse one yet. There were so many larvae in our net - and not all the same species. We had three different brittle stars, two different worms, three types of snails, a barnacle, a little trochophore, and I don't even know how many clams. Insanity! A map showing the two main currents in the Fram Strait and the location of HG-I (yellow star). Plus, the ship was running ahea

A polar bear seen off Polarstern 's stern It was just before 7 am when I stepped through the water-tight door and out onto Polarstern ’s working deck. Crew members in life vests and hard hats were standing around, waiting patiently as the winch reeled in the latest sampling gear at 1 m/s. The air was cold and dry and still. I leaned over the rail to gaze at the sea. Gleaming white ice floes reflected the sunlight, bright as mid-day even though it was only early morning. Pale blue melt ponds dotted the seascape. Plate-sized animal tracks were visible in the snow on one ice floe – probably from a polar bear. We saw one off the ship’s stern just yesterday. Everything is still in the ice. Waves are dampened by the thick, frozen sheets. If there is swell, the long, slow waves just lift the ice floes up and lower them back down. It looks like the ocean is breathing. Soon enough, I was joined by my postdoc, Johanna, another ecologist named Alex, and one of the deck hands. Alex low

A segmented worm larva in our HG-IV sample,  probably Prinospio cirrifera The central station of the HAUSGARTEN observatory , HG-IV, is a very special place. I'm willing to bet it's one of the most researched points in the Arctic Ocean. Since 1999, this unassuming seafloor habitat has been the subject of long-term experiments and repeat annual sampling . Water temperature and current speed are recorded year-round by instruments on a long-term lander. We return to HG-IV over and over on every HAUSGARTEN expedition. I could rattle off a list of the common species on the seafloor at HG-IV, and I'm sure many of my colleagues could as well. It is a place that we all know very well.  We've spent quite a bit of time at HG-IV this week. Between water sampling, sediment sampling, plankton nets, and landers, there is hardly a component of the ecosystem that we have not touched.  The larval samples we collected at HG-IV were our best ones yet! There was much higher biodiversity,

Her name is Berta.  She spends most days lying on Polarstern 's stern. Sometimes, she goes for a long, deep swim. She is made of metal and mesh. Her insides hold untold mysteries of the Arctic deep sea.  I was pretty pleased with my completed net. That's right, Berta is a piece of sampling gear - an epibenthic sledge, to be exact. There's a team on board Polarstern right now that uses their affectionately-named sledge to collect samples from right above the seafloor. The more I talked to the team leader, Saskia, the more we realized that Berta could be a valuable tool for collecting larvae, too.  In my seemingly endless search for Arctic deep-sea larvae, the hardest habitat to reach is the water right above the seafloor. Yet, that's where I suspect many of the larvae might be. I've tried all sorts of different ways to collect and filter water from the very bottom of the ocean - I have deployed a  high-volume plankton pump  on a lander and even left long-term larval

How do larvae disperse in the Arctic Ocean? It's a big question. Over the past several years, I have been on a quest to find the larvae of seafloor invertebrates in the high Arctic. It started with an experiment in 2017. As some of you might remember, I was invited to complete a long-term experiment that year. A lander that had been deployed in 1999 was brought to the surface , and I analyzed the colonists on the lander to understand how communities form in the Arctic deep sea. I found surprisingly little. After 2 decades, only about a quarter of the local species had recruited to the lander, and most individuals were too small to see with the naked eye. I concluded that Arctic deep-sea communities take much longer than 2 decades to develop .  There are several possible explanations for the slow rate of colonization in the Arctic deep sea. Maybe the adults aren't producing any young. That would be pretty interesting, honestly, because it would mean the Arctic deep-sea basin is

"Stand outside at about 11:00 tomorrow. You should see a dotted red line in the water."  - one of the PhD students on board, obviously being ridiculous  When you cross the Arctic Circle, nothing much happens. The lines we're so used to seeing on maps are not present in the real world. There's no sudden change in wind direction, no drop in air or water temperature. A wave does not swell up and high-five you for arriving in the Arctic (although that would be pretty sweet). You just...keep moving forward.  The larval lab is ready to go! As uneventful as today's line-crossing may have been, the science party on board R/V Polarstern is getting excited. Last night's sunset was our last one for a month. The wind chill outside requires the donning of multiple layers now. Every sign points to the fact that our week-long transit from Germany to the Fram Strait is nearly over.  At this point, we are all more than ready for our first samples. The equipment has been fully

On Petra's balcony overlooking the Weser River She picked me up at the train station. When I stepped out of the car, I spotted her immediately in her pastel purple jacket. The matching hat and sunglasses she wore helped protect her 82-year-old skin from the sun. She hugged me tight and told me how happy she was to see me. I returned the sentiment - because I truly was happy to see her too.  Petra Kollakowsky is my adopted grandmother. We met through church back in 2011, when I lived in Germany, and we have traded handwritten letters ever since. I stop by and visit her every time I'm  in Bremerhaven. I call her "Oma," German for "grandmother," and she calls me "Enkel," German for "grandchild." Even though Petra never married or had children of her own, she is incredibly maternal in her interactions with others. Our relationship is truly familial.  As it turns out, I'm not the only one who feels this way about Petra. For the last sever

Elisabeth and the queen "Hi Kirstin, we're mega-excited to see you and will be standing outside in the arrivals hall. Keep an eye out for a rainbow-colored child-size umbrella and a woman who looks like she could be 8 months pregnant." - the last text Stefanie sent me before we met at Berlin's airport It is a powerful experience to watch a friend become a mother, especially one you have known a long time . I met Stefanie back when we were just students in 2011, and now she is a month away from welcoming child #2. Gone are the long nights of lab work followed by 4 am wake-up calls to watch a beloved show live online. Gone are the months-long expeditions to the ends of the earth. Now, life revolves around mid-day naps, a toddler who is always begging for sparkling apple juice, and the anticipation of a new baby's arrival.  I made a joke to Steffi about her daughter, Elisabeth, sharing a name with two queens of England. "Oh, yes," Steffi responded, "El

One of the aquarium displays at CCMNH The Cape Cod Museum of Natural History is part aquarium, part historical museum, and part nature preserve. The small wooden building sits back from the street in Brewster, MA, about an hour from Woods Hole. When my colleague, Calvin, suggested it as a venue for a public seminar, I was immediately interested.  Actually, if there was ever an appropriate venue for a presentation on Calvin’s and my collaborative research, CCMNH is it. The museum is a highly interdisciplinary institution with robust education programs and a seminar series run by the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. This small but mighty museum in Brewster is where biology and archaeology meet. My seminar was well-attended - I estimate there were about 30 people in the room, plus a few more on Zoom. The museum staff were great to work with and managed the technical intricacies of a hybrid presentation well. Over the course of an hour, I shared results of my group’s research in Stell

It's always a good morning when I open my inbox to find a paper has been published. It feels like I've accomplished something before even starting my day.  The paper that has me smiling today is actually a chapter in a book. My maritime archaeologist collaborator, Calvin, came out of our Stellwagen Telepresence Project in 2019-2020 with a mission to address management of shipwrecks in the sanctuary. As you might remember, we spent two summers on a small boat in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, collecting ROV video footage from historically important shipwrecks. One of the biggest results from the whole project was that the primary threat to Stellwagen shipwrecks is entanglement of fishing nets .  Fishing nets don't just get entangled on shipwrecks; they damage them in the process. Our research revealed that the stern of the famous steamship Portland had been ripped off by a fishing net sometime between 2009 and 2019. Plus, fishing nets alter the biological co

Hollis at the mentorship luncheon I slipped out of staff meeting with a quick apology to the Department chair, threw on my backpack, and marched out of the building. No time to waste - I had somewhere to be. There was a 15-year-old kid on the Vineyard expecting to have lunch with me.  For the past several months, I've been mentoring a high school student named Hollis. He came to us through the mentorship program at his school, the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School. Hollis is the youngest intern I've ever taken, but he's become a valuable member of the team. He's extremely good at picking out and identifying marine larvae. Every Wednesday when he steps off the ferry, we catch up about life for a little bit and then settle in at the microscopes. Using glass pipets, we sort baby clams, snails, and sea urchins from the mass of copepods in each sample. I sit right next to Hollis at the microscope while we work and have wide-ranging conversations about everything

Evan Kovacs presenting ROV video footage from Portland The year was 1898. Just three days after Thanksgiving, New England would see the worst maritime disaster in the region's history. The passenger steamship Portland left Boston at 7 pm, bound for Portland, Maine. Meanwhile, the storm of two centuries swept up the North American coast, claiming shipwrecks in her wake. The Portland sailed straight into the storm, and none of the approximately 200 people on board survived.  It's been 125 years since 1898 - well, 2023 was. Last October, my collaborators at Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary planned an event to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the sinking of the Portland . Unforeseen circumstances forced us to reschedule, but we were finally able to hold the event last weekend! Terry Wolkowicz from Sound Explorations sharing her music-based educational creation about Portland 's  biological community.  https://vimeo.com/842533494 We gathered in Portland, Maine, th

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