Meyer-Kaiser lab

For the fiftieth time that day, I heard a high-pitched toddler voice say "arriba." I looked down to see Sebastian standing near me, hands in the air. Arriba. Up. The little stinker was teaching me Spanish.  I lifted Sebastian, rested his puffy, diaper-clad bottom on my hip, and gave his fleshy cheek a kiss. At just under 2 years old, he was unbelievably cute. He smiled at me - a saliva-filled, giggly, genuine smile. So stinking cute. Then he started wriggling and said "Runter" - German for "down."  For some reason, he always asked to be picked up in Spanish but asked to be set down in German.  This was our routine for days. Arriba. Runter. Arriba. Runter. Arriba. Runter. The kid was non-stop.  All of us at the Cape Cod National Seashore Don't get me wrong, it was an incredible visit. Sebastian's parents - one from Germany, one from Colombia - have been my friends for several years. I met Theresa when I lived in Germany in 2011-2012 and Juan a few y...

I feel like I haven't seen Johanna in weeks, because...well, I haven't. She's in town. She's working hard. But she's been spending her time at WHOI's engineering hub, AVAST, instead of in the lab. When I asked her for an update recently, she had nothing but good news to share.  DeepZoo components in assembly at AVAST. Photo by Johanna Weston. You see, Johanna's main postdoc project has been developing a one-of-a-kind hadal zooplankton sampler. She realized soon after joining our lab that there was no way to collect the types of samples we work with (larvae) from the areas in the ocean that fascinate her the most - the hadal zone, below 6,000 m depth. So Johanna set to work. She and I wrote a grant proposal to make the case for the new instrument; the proposal was awarded funding, and Johanna has worked full-steam-ahead ever since.  The design process has gone through multiple rounds. We use the term "iterative" in science to describe a process that...

With Marty at Sandwich Town Beach. We parked the car at 6 am. I expected the parking lot at the Cape Cod Canal Visitor's Center to be empty, but instead, about 10 cars were scattered around. Must be fishermen. There's certain phase of the morning when it's just you and the fishermen - usually right after dawn. I love that time of day.  Gingerly, Marty and I walked over the stones on the side of the beach. The sand would have been easier on our feet, but we weren't going for easy. We were on a mission to collect anemones.  I had never been to Sandwich at low tide before. In fact, I had come to the same jetty just a week before and concluded there were no anemones to be found. I was in the right place, but at the wrong time. When the tide goes out, the deep parts of the rock jetty are exposed, and the anemones become accessible. They hang like limp balloons on the sides of the boulders. Clusters of white and pink and brown individuals fill every crack and gap between the ...

Usually, when I post on this blog, I'm telling you stories of science in progress. Either I'm in the field collecting samples, or I'm crunching numbers in a dataset. Sometimes, I tell you about the end result of science: a published paper. But sometimes, the work doesn't end when my paper hits the press. Sometimes, a whole new project develops out of one that's just finished.  I'm experiencing a new beginning this week, as a brand-new project grows out of one I already completed. You can think of this project as Stellwagen 2.0. Back in 2019-2020 , I led a team investigating shipwrecks in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. We went to sea  on a small boat, used a robot to record videos , and analyzed the communities that lived on four shipwrecks . My team published a total of 4 papers and a book chapter based on our data. We penetrated the Portland shipwreck for the very first time. We held telepresence broadcasts and reached thousands of students ar...

The best part of my job is seeing the scientists in my group succeed. This week, I had the chance to cheer on one of our own - my lab's Summer Student Fellow, Marty.  A satellite photo of the fjord Marty worked on this summer, Rijpfjorden. You can see the gradient in  sediment load and ocean color from the fjord head to its open-ocean mouth. Credit: TopoSvalbard. Marty is a student at Eckerd College in Florida, and she was selected to join my lab this summer for a larval biology project. Last fall, my PhD student, Kharis, collected plankton samples in three fjords in Svalbard. The samples have waited in our freezer ever since for someone to come along and analyze them. I'm so glad that Marty took on the project.  Most Svalbard fjords have a gradient of environmental conditions. Large tidewater glaciers calve off icebergs and melt at the head of the fjord. Cold, low-salinity meltwater forms a lens on the surface of the inner fjord. Small grains of sediment that were trappe...

A scallop shucking party! By the time I crawled into bed, it was 1 am. I thought about going straight to the lab, but I would have ended up napping on the couch. There was no way I could start processing my samples right away - in my exhausted state, mistakes were a real risk, and I didn't want to mess up the samples I had just worked so hard to collect. If I was going to nap, I may as well nap at home.  When the alarm went off at 7, the first thing I did was text my lab group. "Good morning," I wrote to Kharis and Johanna, "if you want free, fresh scallops, show up at WHOI and help me shuck."  It was actually a lot of fun. My husband, Carl, my student, Kharis, my postdoc, Johanna, and Johanna's husband all lined up at the lab bench. I had bought a couple shucking knives, and Kharis brought a few tools of her own from home. Carl and Kharis worked out an effective technique for separating the adductor muscle (the scallop "meat") from the rest of the...

Wychemere Harbor Wychemere Harbor was smaller than I expected. If I hadn't told the map app on my phone to give me loud, verbal directions, I certainly would have driven past it. In fact, I had missed Harbor Road once already and had to turn around at the Episcopal church on the corner. Grassy, flowery lawns surrounded summer homes. Tourists in bright designer dresses and pristine white sandals peered into shopfront windows just a block away. As I pulled into the tiny parking lot of Wychemere Harbor, I could hardly believe this was where a commercial fishing boat called home.  Three Graces was lashed to the front face at the end of the pier - her boxy frame was too long for a standard slip. The diesel engine puttered, and a dark-skinned man moved boxes around the back deck. I approached on foot and tried to find the boat's name on the hull, but the captain spotted me first. I guess a feminine scientist is not something you see every day in Wychemere Harbor.  It took us 30 min...