Daffodils

Every spring, daffodils are the first flowers to bloom in Woods Hole. In fact, the emergence of their light yellow petals has become my personal signal that spring is underway. And Woods Hole is awash in daffodils this week.

Meanwhile, in the lab, spring has sprung with a beautiful bloom of data. Over the winter, my technician, Sarah, spent countless hours huddled indoors, identifying corals living on shipwrecks. Her cold-weather grind of image analysis is now reaching its endpoint, and as the ground thaws outside, her painstaking annotations are emerging as fresh, green datasets. 

Opening those data petals to achieve their full beauty is my job. This week, I have begun analyzing our data to find patterns, discover significant differences, and figure out how the biological community relates to the 3D structure of each shipwreck. My process involves making lots of figures, running every statistical test I can think of, then standing back and letting the data speak to me. 

Believe it or not, figuring out the patterns in a dataset is my favorite step of the scientific process. I love watching patterns emerge from the cloud of numbers and condense into new ecological knowledge. 

I have an excellent dataset to work with. This bloom is beautiful.