I spent the last two and a half weeks in the Galapagos, diving and discovering the beautiful Galapaogs archipelago. I was diving to collect data for my senior thesis, Jon's long-term monitoring projects, and occasionally help out with Robert Lamb's research on fish communities. During this once-in-a-liftime experience I learned invaluable lessons about subtidal ecology fieldwork, saw the marine communities I had been watching on a computer screen for months, and spent time with some amazing ecologists. A typical dive day would start with a 5:00 AM wakeup before sunrise. We would pack into José’s taxi and head down to the dock to load the tanks and gear into the valesca (dive boat). On the bumpy ride to the site, I would usually try and fail to sleep. Jon had an uncanny ability to sleep during the bumpiest of rides. Sometimes during the ride, I would chat with the other scientists about their projects and experience as marine ecologists. The other scientists were Robert Lamb, Don Behringer, Nick Shears, and Roy Yanong. All the scientists were very welcoming to me and generous with their time and knowledge. One time we saw an orca on the way to San Cristobal. We also frequently saw blue-footed and red-footed boobies sailing next to the boat with their colorful feet tucked up into their plumage. When we arrived at the site we would check our tanks and equipment, suit up, and plunge into the water. Jon and I would either do video transects of his long-term monitoring coral plots or take photo quadrats of the benthic communities along a long-term monitoring transect. I would help with the transect tapes and also measure the Porites Lobata corals and write down their measurements on an underwater writing slate. I learned how to tether a transect tape to rocks in high-flow zones by using rocks to weigh them down, zip-tie them, or wrap them through nooks in the rock formed by urchins. I got to use my scuba knife to undo the zip-ties. When you’re underwater all you have is what you brought with you, and you can’t just give up and leave your tools behind. I had to learn how to problem-solve, stay patient, and focus, in a new environment. My favorite animal encounter happened while we were rolling up the transect tapes for a coral plot. A sea lion decided to attack the transect tape. For a few seconds, I let the sea lion unravel the transect that was reeled up in my hand. Then Jon motioned for me to reel it up. I started reeling it up and pulling against the sea lion as one does with a tug toy and a dog. Eventually, we got the tapes all rolled up despite the playful sea lion. Next, the sea lion picked up a shell and dropped it on Jon’s head. As the shell drifted down off Jon’s shoulder and below his flippers, the sea lion suddenly darted down and caught the shell on his nose. He swam up to the surface with the shell balanced on his nose while making eye contact with us, making sure we were witnessing his impressive balancing skills. The sea lion continued to play with us until we surfaced. It would swim directly at us only to swim out of the way at the last second as if playing chicken with us. I’m sure it was confused why we were such clumsy swimmers in comparison. Besides the sea lion, we also saw eagle rays, sharks, sea turtles, lobsters, corals, sponges, black corals, sea fans, and a huge school of salemas. It was truly amazing to dive at so many different sites with different community compositions. Some sites were sheer rock walls, while others were pitted with urchin holes. Some were terraced steps and still others were boulder fields. I was fascinated by the composition of sponges, algae, corals, hydroids, and bryozoans that covered the benthos in a quilt of colors. I spent a lot of time with my face really close to the rock trying to get a sense of the morphology of these sessile organisms. Over time I got better at checking my gear and trouble-shooting, dealing with swell and currents, and managing multiple tools that were clipped to my BCD. When we would surface we would spend an hour or so talking about what we saw, adjusting our gear, and having lunch. It was such a pleasure to spend time on the boat with the team. Each scientist got very excited by specific things, such as a small patch of algae, a lobster molt, or a suspiciously spotted fish. It made me even more sure that this is what I want to spend my life doing. I am so grateful to Jon for making the trip possible and taking me under his wing. I am also grateful to Robbie Lamb for allowing me to join his boat. This was a truly unforgettable experience. I hope you enjoy the pictures and videos.
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Lab member Ella Buchanan recently completed a research project on the environmental, social, and economic factors surrounding sea cucumber harvesting and consumption. Watch her amazing animation below! This is a great example of putting marine benthic ecology in context and using artwork to reach a broader audience. William and group's presentation on a proposed marine protected plan for Cashes Ledge for ENVS 071712/16/2023 William Bachelder, Caitlyn Carpenter, Derek Czapek, Emma Weech, and Julia Taylor culminated their semester long project of creating a marine protected plan for Cashes Ledge with a wonderful presentation. They explored the stakeholders involved, the government laws and history, the ecosystem functioning, and more. Click on the slideshow below to see the slides!
Senior, and long-time lab-member Noah Medina gave an enthusiastic and illuminating talk on the convolutional neural network that he created to sort sound data from the Galapagos into "boat-nose" and "non-boat noise". This is part of a larger project to understand how the Galapagos soundscape change from during the anthropause to after the anthropause. Noah as well as other lab members have spent hours listening to data from our underwater microphone to label training data for his robot. His robot currently has around a 92% accuracy, which is incredible! Noah is graduating this semester but is looking to continue working on his model to further differentiate the sounds in our data into more categories and to improve the accuracy of his CNN. We will miss you Noah!
The Gulf of Maine is heating up faster than 99% of the world's oceans. What will this mean for Cashes Ledge?
The press are loving Jon! The Brown Daily Herald (BDH) wrote written articles about Jon Witman, Andrew Pershing, and John Bruno's latest paper "Smooth and Spikey: The Importance of Variability in Marine Climate Change Ecology." Click here for the link to the article.
The Western Naturalist Society (WSN) is an scientific society with a focus on ecology, evolution, natural history, and marine biology. This meeting in November of 2023 was the 104th annual meeting for the WNS and it was funded by SEAGRANT of Oregon, California, and Alaska. Many of the lab alumni gave talks on their research. The titles of the talks are listed below:
Jon Witman Co-authored the paper, "Smooth and Spikey: The Importance of Variability in Marine Climate Change Ecology", that was the focus of a news article at Brown University. The article summarizes and underlines the content of the paper so readers can understand the important implications of the paper without needing a background in marine ecology. In this paper, Witman et al. note the importance of the variability of heating on understanding marine ecosystems' responses to climate change. Wether an ecosystem experience a gradual and steady increase in temperature or sudden strong climate shocks, is paramount for understanding and predicting the way organisms within the ecosystem will react to climate change. Read more about this influential paper in the Brown News Article here.
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