Meyer-Kaiser lab

Friends, it is an exciting day when a project gets finished! Recently, several volunteers  have been cranking away on a labor-intensive lab project, and the process is now complete! I am very excited to see all their efforts result in a dataset.  The project is all about change in the Arctic Ocean. As you probably know, the polar regions are warming much faster than the rest of the world ocean, but we have yet to grapple with what that means for biodiversity. In 2023, my graduate student, Kharis, and I decided to find out. She found an excellent scientific paper from the early 2000s about biodiversity of tiny animals living between sediment grains in a high Arctic fjord, Kongsfjorden. We were planning a sampling trip of our own to Kongsfjorden at the time, so Kharis suggested that we repeat the sampling design from that previous study. By comparing results, we could see how the Arctic environment has changed over two rapidly-warming decades.  Two of the bivalve species we...

Friends, as you know, I have a busy career. Actually, "chaotic" might be a better word than "busy" - there are always numerous projects, papers, proposals, and people to manage. I basically live in a hurricane.  A while ago, I wanted to make a poster for my lab walls that described the situation. Inspired by the movie "Everything, everywhere, all at once," I tried using generative AI to create a poster titled "Everything, underwater, all at once" with myself as the main character. It didn't work. I'm not sure how many of you have played with gen AI recently, but it is not particularly good at taking instructions like "draw the person in this photo exactly."  Enter my husband, Carl. He's the Vice President of Hardware for an AI company, and he knows his way around the state-of-the-art tools much better than I do. He didn't want to mimic a movie poster - he wanted to make me a brand-new logo for my lab.  In order for you t...

About three times a day, I walk into Olivia's office, or she comes into mine. She inevitably has a question about a coral. We'll sit side-by-side and look at a photo on a computer monitor. We'll pull up the website Corals of the World , leaf through two identification books, and come to a conclusion together. We'll part ways for a few hours, then be back at it again.  Man, I love summer. Specifically, I love summer interns. Olivia came to our lab from Bridgewater State University, which is just about an hour up the road. She knew she wanted to research coral reefs, and she's specifically interested in molecular ecology. When she found out about my lab's Palau project , the choice was clear. We are delighted to have her.  A community of corals on the propeller of a shipwreck. Photo by Cas Grupstra. Right now, Olivia is identifying all the corals that live on two shipwrecks , an airplane , and the coral reefs that surround them. The dataset started as a side proje...

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...

The water is clear as glass in Woods Hole right now. Every year in April, there are a few magical weeks in Woods Hole. The ocean is clear as glass. The turbulence of winter storms has dissipated, and the spring bloom has not yet begun. During those few perfect weeks, the seafloor's normal dark cloak dissolves, and light penetrates all the way through to the sand. I could easily believe the ocean surrounding Woods Hole was tropical.  The impressive clarity of the sea around me has been coupled with clarity of mind. After recovering from my Patagonian sojourn and struggling against the reviewers of my most recent manuscript, I have emerged from a stormcloud of work. I have a rare, beautiful window of freedom before the next round of deadlines approach. Like the ocean, I have nothing but clear, glassy water for a few precious weeks.  Here is the question, friends: what should I do with my time? Of course my to-do list offers plenty of options, but I relish the freedom to choose...

Friends, you're familiar with my love of modern art . I see art and science as orthogonal axes  on the same plane - different ways of capturing the human experience. I incorporate art   with my scientific work and learn from artists whenever I can. Well, today, I am once again drawing on modern art to describe my experience. I am working on a paper revision, and I keep thinking about Martha Graham.  Martha Graham is the mother of modern dance in the United States. She developed her own unique style and technique - even today, you can take dance classes in Graham Technique, and there is an entire professional dance company  that bears her name and uses her style. One of Graham's most famous pieces is called Lamentation . It's a solo ballet performed by a dancer inside of a piece of fabric. As the dancer moves, the fabric stretches, changing shape over and over yet still constraining the dancer's movement.  This week, I have been dancing inside fabric, friends...

On the way from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales on Route 9 , our bus had to stop for a herd of cows to cross the road! If you grew up in the 1990s like me, you certainly learned about the Ozone Hole in school. The "hole" is an area in the atmosphere, centered over Antarctica, where ozone is pretty sparse, and more UV radiation makes it through the atmosphere to the surface of Earth. We were at pretty high latitude (51 - 53 deg) in the southern hemisphere, so UV was a concern. I always made sure to cover up and use sunscreen when we were outdoors. This abandoned pier outside Puerto Natales is now a bird habitat. There are a lot of dogs on the streets in Chile, but it's unclear whether they are pets or strays. My experience in Palau taught me that in some countries, there is a large gray area between the two categories - there are pets who roam, and there are strays who have a home base. We're not sure which category this guy belonged to. He was incredibly polite, as mo...

After a few days in Puerto Natales and lots of hikes in Torres del Paine National Park, the Geodynamics class returned south to Punta Arenas. We toured the Chilean Antarctic Center so the students could have another introduction to Antarctic research. I shipped home a total of 32 samples from 11 stations including near glaciers, in glacial lakes , near icebergs, and throughout the fjord . I was feeling victorious. What could cap off a highly successful trip to Patagonia? One more hike, of course.  My colleague and co-instructor, Michelle, came with me to the Magallanes National Reserve just west of Punta Arenas. The circuit trail, Las Lengas, takes you through the Patagonian forest to a series of viewpoints overlooking the Strait of Magellan. It was a beautiful hike.  I kept seeing these small red berries everywhere, and they reminded me of cranberries. I looked it up, and they are actually related to cranberries!  A beautiful mushroom  Looking out from Mirador Zapa...

A major reason why the Geodynamics class traveled to Patagonia this year was to see glaciers! I want to highlight some of the glaciers we visited and the sights we encountered along the way.  Seen in Torres del Paine National Park. Photo by Elena Perez. Glacial lakes abound in Torres del Paine. These lakes are filled with glacial meltwater. The dark color is from sediment that was released by the melting glacier. Photo by Elena Perez. An iceberg in Lago Grey, a glacial lake fed by Grey Glacier. Photo by Elena Perez. Sunrise at the entrance to Torres del Paine National Park. Serrano Glacier, in Bernard O'Higgins National Park. Photo by Marta Faulkner. Balmaceda Glacier. Photo by Marta Faulkner. One of our open-water sampling stations in the fjord outside Puerto Natales.  Filtering eDNA from water samples in the fjord! Photo by Marta Faulkner. Another freshwater input to the fjord - a waterfall! Photo by Marta Faulkner.

Fog over the cormorants. Photo by Marta Faulkner. Fog hung over the fjord as we pulled away from the dock in the early morning. It wasn't thick or soupy like fog sometimes is. Rather, the moisture clung together in ribbons that weaved around the rocky hills. The fog had its own agenda, knew its own limits. It did not feel the need to blanket us but rather traversed its own path between the peaks. The fog let us be.  After leaving the dock, our first stop was at a cormorant colony. I felt the boat's engines shift gear and calm their mechanical whir. After years of working at sea, the drop of an engine to me means one thing and one thing only: we have arrived at a sampling station.  I didn't care about the cormorant colony. Or the seals that lounged on rocks at the next stop. Or the waterfall cascading into the sea. Each of those marvelous sights drew the 100-some passengers on our boat out of doors, cameras in hand. They slid past one another in the narrow passages and elbow...

Friends, in addition to leading the Geodynamics students around Patagonia, I have my own personal mission: I am collecting samples. (Of course I am. Are you really surprised? Have you ever known me to travel and just enjoy ? Come on.) The samples I'm collecting are part of a project on icebergs that actually served as the impetus for this year's Geodynamics class focusing on the Southern Ocean and coming to Patagonia. The icebergs project came first, and the class took shape around it.  On the dock outside Puerto Natales where I collected my  first samples - it was a successful afternoon! The icebergs project is an effort to understand how ice impacts the marine ecosystem. As many of you know, I have studied the dynamics of dropstone communities in the Arctic since my PhD . Dropstones are terrestrial stones that become entrained glaciers, are carried out to sea by icebergs that calve off of those glaciers, and then fall to the seafloor when the icebergs melt. I have studied ho...

Looking out from inside Cueva del Milod όn With all the Geodynamics students finally in Patagonia, we traveled from Punta Arenas up to Puerto Natales . If Punta Arenas is the research hub of Patagonia, Puerto Natales is the outdoor adventure hub. There are hostels on pretty much every street corner, and plenty of people around town have giant backpacks to survive multiple days in the mountains. That's because Puerto Natales serves as the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park .  Some of the more ambitious students took off on a hike in the park as soon as we arrived. Others explored a ca ve near town, and it is this latter destination that I want to highlight: la Cueva del Milodόn (Mylodon Cave).  If you haven't seen a Mylodon before, that's understandable. They're extinct. Mylodons were giant ground sloths that lived in the southern part of South America, including Patagonia, in the late Pleistocene. They were massive - 3 or 4 m long, with body masses in the tons. C...

At the halfway point in my trip, my companions completely changed. Carl and Maria , who had accompanied me on the vacation leg, headed home to resume normal life, and they were replaced by 18 PhD students and 3 of my fellow faculty in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. In between, I had just enough time to switch hotels and do a load of laundry in the bathtub. The 2025 WHOI Geodynamics Patagonia trip was on! [Well, for most of us. A group of 9 people got hung up in transit and ended up arriving a day later than planned. Anytime you try to take 22 people to a new continent, someone's flight will be delayed. It's basically a law of nature.] R/V Noosfera at the pier in Punta Arenas.  Photo by Michelle Shero. Those of us who made it to Chile on the first day had a good start to our trip - with a scientific meeting. It was important to me to connect with researchers on the ground during our visit to Patagonia. One of our motivations for flying into Punta Arenas was to experience the Sout...

By far my favorite thing that we did in Punta Arenas was visit Isla Magdalena to see the breeding colony of Magellanic penguins ( Spheniscus magellanicus ). These adorable flightless birds migrate every year to the tropics on the west and east sides of South America, then return to Patagonia to breed. The males arrive first to make burrows, and the females arrive a bit later. A clutch of exactly two eggs is laid in October, and the chicks hatch 40 days later. During our visit (in March), the juveniles had just molted and left the island. The adults were completing their own molt and getting ready to return north for the winter.  This post will contain a lot of penguin pictures. I just have to share them! This is what the landscape looks like at Isla Magdalena - a lighthouse, grass, and penguins. Hi, little guy! Some penguins headed to the beach We were told not to touch the penguins, to give them plenty of space, and to let them cross the path without interference. This little guy ...

After a few days in what seemed like the end of the world, remote Torres del Paine , we turned around and followed the Route to the End of the World back south...to the actual end of the world. Friends, I am in Punta Arenas, Chile! Punta Arenas certainly doesn't seem like the end of the world. It's a city with 145,000 people. There are restaurants and shopping malls and traffic noise. If you air-dropped me in the middle of downtown with no information and made me guess where I was, I would never guess "On an isolated peninsula at the bottom of the globe."  The first Chileans to live in Punta Arenas arrived here in 1848, after a short-lived attempt to settle further south. Fuerte Bulnes (Bulnes Fort), the site of the first Chilean settlement in the Magallanes region, is exposed and windy - I can tell you that from personal experience after visiting the historic site. Bulnes actually got such a bad reputation for living conditions that it eventually became a penal colo...

Guanacos! These funny animals ( Lama guanicoe ) are the relatives of llamas and alpacas, and they belong to the same family as camels. They are everywhere ! We saw a ton of these duck-ish birds. I tried hard to get a good picture so I could upload it to this species identification app I use. After all that trouble, the app said "it's a bird." Yeah, thanks, app. A visit to the natural history museum showed me that this darling is in fact a male Upland Goose ( Chloephaga picta ), also called Caiquén. My first thought when I saw these birds was "emu," but I knew I was on the wrong continent. Instead, these are rheas! Also called ñandus, they are the South American equivalent of emus or ostriches. The species in Patagonia is Rhea pennata . We visited a rocky intertidal site, and I was excited to see blue mussels! These are Mytilus chilensis , a close relative of the species I'm familiar with from the northern hemisphere. Just like their boreal brethren, M. chile...