Bird Island in Animas Bay (Photo By: Natalie Testa)

A beautiful bay I sailed to near La Paz

The Sea of Cortez from the Skies

Flamingo on the Bow of the Ron Brown During Our Last Sunset

After finishing our CTD survey line, there were very few operations left on the PNE 2021 cruise: we had another moored buoy to deploy at 15° North and a few Argo floats left.  Suddenly, gone were the 12-hour shifts, the dancing and listening to music while collecting water samples- all replaced by another 2-week transit.
 
While we transit, I find myself desperately trying to hold on to time, but it seems to slip through my fingers. The days are flying by and I know I’m going to be stepping back on land in Key West in the blink of an eye.  That’s not to say that I don’t miss land – there’s a pretty lengthy list of things I’m really excited to do once back on solid ground, but there is something profoundly grounding about being offshore. 
 
I’ve struggled to write about what being offshore means to me – and with the Equator Crossing Ceremony, I think I’ve finally started to understand what I find so intoxicating about spending time in remote parts of the ocean: I feel connected to Earth.  When standing on a deck that is rolling with the motion of 10-foot swells passing from one side of an ocean to another, it feels impossible not to feel connected to nature and the forces that drive geological processes that span millennia.  I also find myself centered when standing under a sky full of stars, navigating whichever urban/suburban/pelagic world I currently occupy through my proximity to Orion’s Belt– another reminder that life is both wonderful and insignificant in the context of the Universe.  When hanging in the balance between an ocean so powerful and a night sky so vast, it’s easy to let the unimportant stresses of life fall away.   This is why I chase offshore adventures.
 
However, in light of how huge and boundless the oceans and space may seem, the more I reflect on them, the more I understand how we are impacting our immediate ecosystem. We litter our upper atmosphere with debris from space exploration and dirty our oceans with plastic pollution, chemical pollution, ocean acidification, derelict fishing gear…the list goes on.  And while it’s easy succumb to feeling dejected about what’s going on our beautiful life-supporting planet, I have had to remind myself that the reason I’m on this cruise is to help diagnose some of the problems associated with climate change.  By participating in this oceanography-research cruise I am helping to collect data that are part of a multi-year time series, allowing scientists to see more or less in real time what is happening in our oceans as the atmosphere changes.
 
I find myself balking at the fact that I’ve been at sea for 6 weeks – it feels like just a couple days ago that I hopped on the Ron Brown in Miami Beach – and yet, I also feel like I know my shipmates like an extended family. We’ve shared laughs, work, meals, and some very tippy swells, but as our time draws to a close, I’m reminded of disembarking from the Maersk Launcher in Hawaii: feeling slightly adrift in the world – untethered and yet excited about what comes next.  For my last research cruise the “what comes next” was the All Hands On Deck NOAA Ocean Exploration Forum, and of course the analysis of my master’s research.  What awaits me on shore in South Florida is my first full-time job as a marine biologist!  And a world still navigating the throes of a pandemic and vaccine distribution.

Saying Goodbye to the Ron Brown in Key West

I received a request to write about the stars at sea, and funnily enough, even before receiving this request, I had spent the last few days thinking on how exactly I wanted to address my adoration for the night sky.

​I lack a camera that can capture pictures of stars, so please enjoy one of the sunsets I saw in the Atlantic.

​ As I move through life, I’m always forgetting to look at the ground in front of my feet. I trip over air, run into every possible surface of a boat when sailing, and generally am a bit clumsy. If I’m at the beach, I’m looking out to sea, hoping for a marine mammal spotting, maybe a spectacular wave, or lately, wondering what lies beyond that horizon and how I can chase that line.  At night I feel drawn towards the night sky.  I will be the first to admit that I’m not all that great at finding constellations, and yet something about gazing up at the blanket of stars is both comforting and mind-bogglingly big (to quote a favorite author).
 
I find a bizarre contentment in my own insignificance on this planet and my love of the stars really leans into that feeling.  Something about the realization of just how small we are on this planet really comes into sharp focus when I’m offshore.  Your world shrinks to the size of your ship – in the case of the Ron Brown, it feels like I’ve known everyone on board my whole life – and three-hundred-odd feet feels limiting when there isn’t all that much time spent alone.  Shockingly, I don’t find it claustrophobic or suffocating, but there is always the realization of just how large the oceans are when your entire home floats and gets knocked around by the forces of the seas.
 
Night after night from the day we left Miami, the volunteers of my oceanography lab group set out on deck in search of beautiful constellations, excited to have left a huge urban area behind us.  Instead, we were greeted with thick clouds, patchy clouds, and a few chilly breezes that sent us scurrying back inside the ship in search of sweatshirts and sleep.
 
The first night a celestial body caught my attention was while we were conducting one of our CTDs off the Cape Verde islands.  I beat the survey technician I was working with to the deck and was greeted by warm tropical air and darkness along the starboard side of the ship.  A cheeky crescent moon grinned down at me from above the sea and I remember holding onto the ship and grinning right back.
 
Most of my late nights on the Ron Brown have been spent by behaving slightly silly, as I am wont to do in situations with little sleep/less sleep than I would like – particularly when it’s a self-imposed lack of sleep.  During the course of our CTD survey, I have danced with the stars on deck, sang to them and the sea, and glared menacingly at clouds that had the audacity to block my view of the heavens.
 
On Valentine’s Day, we had our final major operation for this cruise.  We replaced a moored buoy and conducted our last CTD cast.   To ensure that the installation of a moored buoy is successful, we always do a flyby:  checking to see how it’s sitting in the water, making sure that all of the sensors are working – what you would expect from an inspection of a scientific sensor.
 
The operations took us into the evening and as we were making our approach toward the buoy, I stood on deck in the dark and sought out Orion’s Belt – the only constellation I can consistently locate in the night sky.  I feel as though I anchor myself in this world in relation to Orion – there’s something so comforting about the consistency of looking up and finding the stars exactly where they should be.  Luckily for me, my anchor can be seen from anywhere in the world, since the constellation Orion resides near the Equator. 
 
I was unable to locate the Southern Cross during our brief foray into summer and the Southern Hemisphere, but a sky full of stars unmarred by the artificial light of the cities I’ve grown up in has made this trip absolutely unforgettable.
 
Thanks are due to Josh for the reminder to go outside and look at the stars.  I spent much of 2020 feeling untethered and lost in this crazy pandemic world, but I had only to spend some time looking up to find my anchor again.  Sitting alone on the back deck and staring at the sky has brought about some of the clearest thinking I’ve had all trip. I may not have more to say about the stars themselves, but thank you for helping me find the words to illustrate their significance in my life.

The sun has set, the Equator has been crossed, and I find myself sitting in the computer lab for what may end up being my shift’s last CTD cast on the PNE PIRATA 2021 cruise.  Although my last post may have made it seem like all we are out here doing is having fun and sitting in pools on the back deck, I did volunteer to help conduct science at sea.  And let me tell you – science was CONDUCTED!

CTD Sunsets (Photo by Tara Clemente)

​A research vessel like the Ron Brown is designed to more or less be able to conduct scientific work on a 24 hour a day schedule, so our small team of volunteers working under the ship’s Chief Scientist figured out a watch system. However, unlike the multiple short watches we take when sailing offshore, our watches on this ship are 12 hours – you’re either on the clock or not – and during that time you’re responsible for all of the CTD casts that fall during that shift.  My roomie and I were luckily on the same shift – noon to midnight, which seemed easy enough at the beginning of our schedule, but as we hit a region with increased sampling it ended up being really tough!
 
CTD casts are conducted in pretty much the same way every time: open all of the Niskin bottles, turn on all of the sensors, and send the whole rig up and over the side of the ship and down to 1500 meters depth (or nearly a mile deep).  As the rosette is pulled back toward the surface, it is stopped at depths that have interesting salinities or oxygen contents.  From the comfort of the dry room we can tell the CTD to close an individual bottle on the rosette, thereby taking one water sample at that exact depth. We do this at multiple depths until all of the bottles in the rosette are filled with samples. After taking our samples, the whole apparatus is brought back onto the ship for processing.  For each depth sample we fill one fancy glass flask full of water for oxygen titrations and another for measuring the salt content.

The Autosal lives in the Salt Dungeon here on the Ron Brown

​Our team split up the processing of samples and I got to learn how to use an AutoSal. It’s a fancy machine that looks like the technology hasn’t changed since the 1980s, but can tell you what the salinity of your sample is using the conductivity of the water in the chambers.  SCIENCE!!  The AutoSal on the Ron Brown is located in the room called the Salt Dungeon – an apt and silly name for a room that stays at 24°C ALWAYS, which feels very warm on the otherwise very cool ship.  The dungeon part makes sense because when processing samples you can be in there up to 4 hours at a time.
 
On this cruise, our team’s two different watches have conducted 60 CTD samples along 23° West in the middle of the Atlantic. It has been such a wildly different experience from the last research cruise I was on: for one, as we were taking some of our first CTD samples, we were passing by the Cape Verde islands. Standing outside in the dark on the deck watching the lights go by on the horizon was a very foreign feeling – we’d been at sea about 2 weeks, seeing nothing but water and the occasional other ship going by along the horizon.  Seeing shore and knowing we still had 4 weeks to go on our ship was a little jarring, especially because it has been relatively easy to forget that the world is still negotiating pandemic-related life, while life onboard is as close to “normal” as anything I can remember in the last year.
 
Because we have had to travel between CTD locations and because we don’t sleep for 12 hours a day, we definitely still have had time to have some fun while on the CTD survey line.  As we approached the Equator, someone placed an inflatable pool on the back deck. Although I’ve been on cruise ships before, there is nothing that ever prepared me for the feeling of being in a pool on a ship moving through even more water.  A shipmate put the feeling best – it’s kind of like being in a perpetual wave pool.

The Ron Brown's Pelagic Pool

​We also crossed the Equator on this trip – my FIRST TIME crossing the Equator by sea!  At the Equator we got to do an extra deep CTD where we sent the rosette to (very close to) the bottom at 3900 meters!  The pressure at that depth is immense … and as such we took it upon ourselves to evaluate the pressure using the tried-and-true method of sending Styrofoam to the bottom of the ocean and pulling up a much, much, much smaller piece of Styrofoam than what we sent down (see below).  In addition to the Styrofoam, we sent a 2-pack of cinnamon poptarts to the bottom of the ocean to see what would become of them, and then ate the slightly soggy – I mean lightly salted – poptarts once they made their way back to us.  Did I stop and taste the water that came from the bottom of the ocean? ABSOLUTELY!!! It tasted … like accidentally taking a mouthful of salt water at the beach.  BUT ALL IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE!!!!

My styrofoam disk, with my hand for scale!

Quite possibly one of my favorite things about spending time working offshore, is what you can find to do on the ship when you aren’t working.  Of course, we are out here to conduct science, but like any job there’s the time that you spend working…and there’s a fair bit of time that you’re not working!  Our CTD survey line is closer to the coast of Africa than pretty much anywhere else in the Atlantic, so I’ve had ample time (around 2 weeks!) to explore the Ron Brown and spend time with different parts of the crew!
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As I learned from my last research cruise, I love running on treadmills while at sea.  That said, it is still very difficult to run on a treadmill when the very ship that the treadmill is connected to is moving around. Thus, the belt on the machine isn’t always where you left it.  Frequently for me this translates into almost going flying off the treadmill in a graceful step of one foot landing partially off the treadmill and the other foot SCRAMBLING to keep me from falling face first into the controls of the machine.  I imagine watching this process is much like watching a dove in flight (or then again, probably not).  With the ever-present threat of falling off the running machine, you might not think that it would be all that desirable to go for a run.  However, I have found that the treadmill is quite possibly the hottest commodity in the gym – every time I go down to the gym space it is exciting to see the treadmill not occupied.

Another common way to pass time on offshore trips is reading – I’ve read thousands of pages of fantasy novels all over this ship! But seeing as the ship is a large space, my bunkmate and I have also spent lots of time exploring the ship and getting to know our shipmates.  During one of our early briefings on the ship, we were told that we were welcome up on the bridge so long as there were not major operations occurring.  We took this information as an invitation to spend every possible minute between breakfast and lunch on our transit across the Atlantic standing on the bridge with the captain and officer on watch.  I learned how to measure distances on nautical charts (maps of the ocean floor are called charts!), I discovered that there is a Gibbs Sea Mount in the Caribbean, AND we got to see hundreds of flying fish frantically skimming across the surface of the sea away from the bow of the ship.  In addition to beautiful views of the Atlantic, we were graced with an absolutely wonderful rainbow during the transit which was a treat!

This rainbow made my WEEK

This cruise has been a lucky one for me as far as wildlife spotting – I’ve seen a lot of firsts this trip!  While we were observing the moored buoy operation, we spotted a tuna chasing a flying fish. Both hopped out of the water near the ship and it was an exhilarating predator-prey interaction to have the pleasure of seeing!  Although spotting dolphins is pretty commonplace when spending time at sea, we saw hundreds of dolphins surrounding our ship near Cape Verde, jumping alongside our wake and following us for a few magical minutes.  However, today I had a HUGE first for me in the form of a really unexpected marine mammal sighting.  We heard an announcement about marine mammals off the port side and rushed outside to be greeted by a pod of short-finned pilot whales frolicking near the ship!!!  After my trip to the Pacific where we saw shockingly few animals, I had low expectations about the wildlife spotting on this trip and have been THRILLED to have that expectation overturned.

There are dolphins in this pic ... I was really excited to see them and forgot about my camera

There is also currently a ship-wide ping pong tournament happening – we have all kinds of participants from almost every department of the ship, and the stakes are high.  Pride is on the line after all!  The games occur in all kinds of weather and, as with running on a treadmill in almost any sea state, the ship can pitch or roll any which way. Personally, I think the roll of the ship really adds to the excitement of spectating a ping pong game, in addition to leveling the playing field a bit.  The ping pong table is set up in the main lab, so ping pong is a common way for me and my bunkmate to spend time just before meals or waiting to get on site for an operation.
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Our time spent recreating on the Ron Brown is drawing to a close as we approach our survey line of CTDs, which begins 300 miles off the coast of Africa.  Our survey line will be really cool, as our research group splits into a day and night shift, collecting CTD samples around the clock!  I’ve been having a wonderful time bouncing around the ship helping with other group’s projects (like re-painting the mooring buoys), but I’m really looking forward to helping conduct the research I volunteered to participate in back in November!

Doing SCIENCE and painting buoys (Photo by Grace Owen)

Though it is a little late in January to be writing a “New Year’s” post, I had a relatively tumultuous new year, including a cross-country move in my car, a week-long self-quarantine in a hotel room in Miami, dumping a Venti Starbucks tea on my laptop, AND boarding NOAA Research Vessel the Ronald H. Brown.  Today I’m writing this blog post from very nearly the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!  We are currently 11 days into an oceanography research cruise that left from Miami, FL on January 15.  I am a volunteer on a project that is collecting data on salinity, temperature and ocean depth for research being conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


Our project is using some really cool technology in order to evaluate oceanographic conditions in the Atlantic Ocean.  For one of our pieces of technology, we are using an Argo Float, which is a scientific device that we drop off the aft of the ship while underway. After being deployed, these floats sink to 1000 meters deep where it will sit for 10 days collecting data on salinity and temperature.  Because of the depth of these remote sensors, we can’t receive data transmissions from them while they sit at 1000 meters, so before being thrown in the water, the float will be programmed to “bounce” to the surface.  During one of these “bounces” the Argo float will drop down to about 2000 meters collecting more temperature and salinity data and then will rise up to the surface collecting more measurements on its way up.  Once on the surface, the float will send all of the salinity and depth measurements to scientists on land via satellite communication.

Here is us preparing an Argo Float deployment - the box and tape are biodegradable and the sensor is inside the box!

​In addition to dropping Argo floats on our transit, we are conducting what are called CTDs, which stands for Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth readings, using an elaborate device pictured below.  The whole rosette (or frame) contains a bunch of Niskin bottles, an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), and a “brain” which controls the device.  The whole system is connected to the ship with a cable which allows the science team (that’s me!) sit in the computer lab and read out the measurements of salnitity, temperature, and depth of the whole system as it descends to 1500 meters deep.  The Niskin bottles on the rosette allow us to take water samples from 12 different depths as we raise the CTD back onto the ship.  The ADCP helps us “look” up and down in the water column using sound to measure current flow around the device.

The CTD rosette is HUGE and has the gray Niskin bottles on the outside, with the yellow and black ADCPs on the inside of the frame.

For the measurement process, we get to evaluate multiple aspects of the water column – which is the oceanographic term for a profile of seawater from the surface to the bottom (or other specified depth).  For our CTD measuremets we are looking at the salt content (which changes over depth), as well as oxygen content (which changes over depth!), and water temperature (which, you guessed it, ALSO changes over depth!).  All of these measurements are super helpful for our chief scientist and his lab back on shore to understand what is happening with all of these variables in the open ocean.  CTD measurements along this cruise route have been taken for many years and can show changes in salinity, oxygen, and temperature at the same location over time.  Additionally, understanding what physical and chemical changes occur in the oceans can give researchers a better understanding of the physics and chemistry of the open ocean!
 
So in essence, I booked it across the country from my home in Southern California, for a research cruise on the opposite coast, much like I did originally for my Master’s Research on the Maersk Launcher. BUT THIS TIME I’m on the East Coast to stay for a while – I got a job in South Florida (but you’ll hear more about that once I’m back on shore!)
 
What’s really cool about this research cruise is that there are 4 different research groups on board the ship!  One group is studying the spatial distribution of Sargassum, a brown algae species, in the tropical Atlantic.  Another group studying aerosols including ozone and dust particles over the Atlantic.  The last group (aside from our oceanography group) is conducting maintenance on some moored buoys which are part an international effort to expand measurements of open ocean conditions throughout the tropical Atlantic.
 
All of these research groups are working in conjunction on a shared ship so we’ve been getting to know each other and learn about other group’s research from around the country (ours is the only group from Miami,) as well as the various backgrounds of the people working on the ship!  It takes more than a team of scientists to keep a ship afloat and moving across the Atlantic, and our ship is crewed by multiple departments – on the bridge we have officers from the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps, a branch of the uniformed service, while engineers keep the ship, and importantly the air conditioning, functioning.  We have a deck department who are essential in both science and ship operations, as well as survey crew who assist all research groups in their various projects, and a galley crew to keep all of us fed, AND a doctor from the United States Public Health Service – something I didn’t know existed until just over a week ago.
 
Wow. Listing it out like that makes it make a little more sense that there are 44 people on this ship living and working together at sea.
 
Given that we are still facing the threat of Covid-19, this trip on the high seas looks a little different than my last research cruise did.  Last cruise, I just arrived at the port and hopped on the ship, whereas this cruise, we were all required to do a 7-day self-quarantine, during which everyone was tested for Covid midway through our quarantine.  We also had a second Covid test conducted on the ship 7 days after leaving port.  Thankfully, we have all tested negative for Covid, and as a precaution are still obligated to wear masks in public spaces – it’s funny trying to remember names and faces when all you really see of the people on the ship is their eyes and hair, but we’re making do, and still conducting science!  All of which is very exciting, since I’ve been lusting for time on the water since disembarking from my sailing trip late last summer.
 
It feels like a long time ago that I was sitting on the Launcher trying to describe life at sea, but I’m back bouncing from one side to another in my cabin, having woken up at 4:45am to conduct a CTD and spent much of the day helping out with the replacement of a moored buoy that was sitting in over 5,000 meters of water.  That means we had more than 5,000 meters of line to pull up onto a spool by hand onboard the ship.  It’s nearly dinner and I’m running on caffeine and general science hype – tired from spooling line, but ready to help replace the next few moored buoys.

​We replaced this buoy and are going to clean it and put some sensors on it and send it back out later in the cruise!

I struggled with immense writer’s block the last few days, but I think I’ve finally found my footing (sea legs?) for writing about time and research at sea, so I’m looking forward to sharing more about what life on the open ocean looks like from a research vessel!  If you have any questions you want answered please feel free to comment below, or send an email to hello@thisblogistrash.com

We had the first Climate Change Book Club discussion and it went a lot better than I thought it would!  Everyone was excited to share about their experience reading the first half of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything and we had some really meaningful discussions about what steps we can take to reduce our climate change footprint as twenty-somethings living in the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Unexpectedly, that conversation turned to banking. Specifically, where banks invest our money when we’re not using it. And, SURPRISE— a lot of those investments end up going to Big Oil & Gas and other insidious industries.  Shout out to Naomi Klein for once again educating me and ruining my day in the same breath. 
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As someone who takes regular steps to live more sustainably, banking is something that had never crossed my mind when making adjustments toward living a greener lifestyle.  Banking has seemed pretty harmless in my day to day life – sure the banks were bad back in like the Great Depression, but we’re living in 2020.  I can deposit my paychecks online!  The future is now!  That was until I started learning about where my bank is investing my money.

I started banking with Chase back in my first year at UCSB.There wasn’t an easy way to access my hometown credit union (this was in the time before functional mobile deposits) and there was a Chase right in the heart of IV.  Later when I moved to Miami, it wasn’t a problem to keep using Chase because their banks are everywhere.  Andddd that’s about the extent of all of the thought that has gone into my banking.

But after our book club discussion, I realized it was high time that I did some research about what my money is actually going toward.  

So, this morning I decided to look into just how “bad” my bank was – Chase can’t actually be the worst, right?  W R O N G!  According to this report Chase invested almost 64 BILLION DOLLARS in fossil fuels in 2018 alone.  What kind of environmentalist do I think I am, if I’m out here FUNDING exploration for fossil fuels in precious and fragile ecosystems?

What do you mean that Chase is “bad”, Bree?

JPMorgan Chase is a big investment bank. Investment banks provide a number of services to their customers including credit cards, savings accounts, mortgages, loans, and investments.  But what I didn’t understand about banks until recently is that banks need to make money in addition to just holding onto it in checking and/or savings accounts.  Until exploring this topic further,  I had just assumed that banks made their money from the interest rates on loans and mortgages - things like that.  Unfortunately, this is not the case.   So the money that I paid to keep my account open has become capital for Chase to invest as it sees fit.  And Chase it turns out invests BILLIONS in the fossil fuel industry.

According to Statista, worldwide, global oil production was generating 95.192 million barrels of oil a day.  And banks like Chase invest in “continuing production” — meaning that  as we run out of “easy” to access oil reserves, money is still pouring in to explore for oil that is more difficult and environmentally costly to access. 

So what’s a girl who wants to save the planet to do?  Going full Christopher McCandless and burning all of my money isn’t exactly an option.


To divest means to deprive of power, rights, or possessions, and in this case, I decided I wanted to use my power as a consumer to take away what little capital I was holding with Chase and place it with an organization that is more in line with my beliefs.  Lucky for all of us, there’s actually a few financial institutions that aren’t totally spineless that we can choose from.  While poking around and looking at other banks in my region – focusing especially on ones that have similar sustainability  goals with respect to our planet—  I found OneUnited Bank and Bank of the West, both of which I am seriously considering investing my money into.  Unfortunately with Covid cases on the rise in my county, I have to wait until I can open an account in person.  In the meantime, I have decided to withdraw most of my money out of my Chase account and place it in my old Credit Union account.

If you are reading this and are interested in divesting from fossil fuels and banking with a different organization than the one you are currently using, this list from Yes! Magazine has banks by region of the U.S. that do not invest in fossil fuels.  Additionally, this map tool from Green America helps you find a better bank as defined by the Global Alliance for Banking on Values – so a bank with sustainable economic, social, and environmental development goals. Who would have thought!

Are you going to make or have you already made the switch to a greener bank? Tell me all about it in the comments section!

Just your local Trash Scientist blending in. (Photo by Grant Bemis)

Kismet (Photo by Grant Bemis)

Contrary to the speed this picture portrays, we were not moving
(Photo by Grant Bemis)

The Alligator River

I love locks (photo by Grant Bemis)

This is the motion I do when I talk about kelp...so Emily, Julie and I decided to all be kelp! (Photo by Grant Bemis)

Kismet in Maryland - we made it!

**Author's Note: It has been brought to my attention that the ICW does in fact extend past Florida and goes up through the Gulf of Mexico.  The Gulf ICW extends from Carrabelle, FL to Brownsville, TX.  It bears noting that I have neglected over 1000 miles of the ICW by only discussing the East Coast portion of the canal. 

Offshore views were pretty tight

The approximate path of S/V Kismet from Stuart, FL to Charleston, SC
(via Google Maps)

The compass and I were bffs on my night watches

No I didn't get a picture fo the Leatherback...but this is me right after I saw it!

Nothing beats a sunset offshore.

I love sailing... a lot... here's me at the helm!

Under sail on the Atlantic, somewhere off south Florida

The sunsets have been pretty killer this trip

Shark photos by Stephen Trbovich.

Elana and me at the Wetlab in our matching Great White Shark Socks.

Nurse shark photo by Matthew Bernanke.

Here's a picture of me with my favorite shark...in Animal Crossing New Horizons on my Switch.

Elana taking a blood sample on a nurse shark (photo courtesy of Elana Rusnak).

Elana’s research was separated into two parts. The first part of her research was studying a specific protein - C-reactive Protein or CRP - that has a naturally low baseline (meaning that there are relatively low concentrations of the protein in an mammal’s blood normally) which skyrockets during an infection and drops back off once the infection has run its course.  Cool, right?! Elana spent 2 years looking for the CRP gene in nurse shark liver tissue RNA and DNA.  For this part of her project all she could conclude was that CRP is present in the nurse shark genome but was not able to conclude that it acts in the same way during an inflammatory response in sharks as it does in mammals.  Elana said of her work on CRP: “It took me 2 years to get the CRP result and 99% failure - that’s a really important part of science.  Trying something and failing.”

The second part of Elana’s research was looking at transcriptomes, which detail the active cellular and protein processes occurring in that part of the body at the time of sampling.  For this project, she had the novel opportunity to look at a sick and healthy nurse shark’s liver transcriptome to compare the two.  In order to compare them, she built the transcriptome and looked at the differences in gene expression between the two sharks.  In order to understand what was happening in these different sharks, Elana used gene matches from genetic databases (which are apparently out there like little libraries for genomes!!!) and found that the genes and proteins from the complement pathways were really active, which shows that the complement pathway is a fundamental part of the shark immune system!  The complement system is a part of innate immunity that functions to clear infection in the host by boring a hole into the pathogen’s cell wall, causing it to burst open and die.  Conveniently, this is Elana’s favorite part of the immune system, and she’s really looking forward to learning more about this process in sharks!  
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Elana’s research has contributed to a greater understanding of the role different genes play in shark immunity, and she hopes to pursue a PhD learning more about shark or other fish eco-immunology.

You can see Elana giving a lecture about obscure sharks as part of an online series with Broadreach here.
Connect with Elana on Instagram: @elasmo_elana 
or Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elana-rusnak-marine-bio/
 
Elana Rusnak recently completed her MSc degree in Marine Biology and Ecology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami.  She worked both as an undergraduate and a graduate researcher in the Shark Research and Conservation (SRC) program for 4.5 years.  Her work focused on the immunobiology of the nurse shark (her favorite!).  She was able to isolate some potentially important immune genes for the first time, and learned more about what an immune response looks like in a sick shark's liver!  She hopes to continue on and get a PhD in the field of Eco-immunology, where the immune function of an organism, like a shark or a bony fish, is related to how it interacts with its natural environment (ecology).   Elana loves to teach and would like to become a university professor after she completes her doctorate.

      During the Covid-19 Lockdown in California, I joined a Climate Change Book Club.  This experience has been both exciting and more than a bit surreal as I read about one impending global crisis, while living the shocking reality of an entirely different global crisis.  The club is made up of some of my peers and friends in marine science careers as well as two friends in other biology doctoral programs.  This group brings super interesting perspectives to the problem of climate change because we all have different backgrounds (even those of us in marine science focus on different topics, and it’s been super interesting to try and take the additional time offered by not having ANY commute (or a whole slew of other time consuming activities) to dedicate to a topic I care rather desperately about.

     We are reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Captialism vs. the Climate.  The book is about how Climate Change and Capitalism are fundamentally at odds with one another, and how despite the fact that we’ve known about anthropogenic (man-made) climate change for decades (Plantico and Karl, 1990), the interests of free trade and the economy have always come ahead of the needs of our fragile environment.

     I went on a (socially distant) walk with a close friend during the first week of being a part of my climate change book club and we were talking about the implications of climate change to our generation – catastrophic changes to our climate that cannot be predicted exactly but what we do know is that we can expect increased intensity of storm events like hurricanes, enormous rain storms and flooding, as well as hotter and drier droughts.  My friend looked at me and said she didn’t know how I did it – working with climate change as a biologist, how to not get depressed in the face of all of these uncertainties, in addition to the knowledge that there is an alarming number of people denying that these changes are occurring in the first place.

     To be honest, I don’t know how or why we are able to keep our heads up, but every other scientist I know working in the field of marine or atmospheric science has something they hold on to in the face of climate change – be it coming up with resilient solutions for communities using natural barriers, or researching the aspects of a creature’s biology which allow survival in changing environmental conditions.
So why start a book on climate change in the midst of a global pandemic?

     Well to be honest, I had been meaning to get around to books about the climate and more “serious” books than the escapism fiction books I normally read, but realistically it took my friend reaching out to me and asking if I was interested in joining the book club before I could actually commit to the task that is reading about how badly we’ve messed up our wonderful planet.  I’ve struggled throughout my academic career to look at extinctions caused by humanity as a whole because it’s such an emotional topic for me but at this point climate change is coming, and I’d rather be informed about all the steps we took to get here so at the very least I can be a little more prepared.     

     This topic is inherently uncomfortable.  It’s close to home because it quite literally is going to affect our home and the world at large in ways we can’t know until it happens.  And that’s scary.  Now what’s fascinating about reading this book has been the reaffirming of the beliefs that I’ve held for quite some time about the uncertainty we face due to climate change.  Now as a young overly progressive ridiculously loud environmentalist, I’ve been told for YEARS that I’m overreacting or that “it’ll work itself out”. 

     Klein’s book has highlighted a lot of the changes that we can expect to see in the face of climate change, especially given that we’ve been operating business as usual in terms of our emissions for the past 30 years in spite of scientific evidence clearly stating that increased emissions WILL impact our climate in ways that will become additive and unpredictable.  And although this knowledge isn’t comforting, it is refreshing to hear about climate change in direct terms rather than the wishy-washy watered-down nonsense that has been such a large part of the political discourse since I was old enough to listen to what politicians were saying.

Bummer, dude.

     Yeah.  I’ve been hesitant to talk about the current Covid lockdown/social distancing/whatever exactly is happening because it’s equally uncomfortable for me to talk about.  But one day on a walk down to the beach near me, I set up a towel on the grass about 100 feet from the closest person and laid down to read the introduction of This Changes Everything.  It was a Thursday afternoon, and you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t the middle of summer for how many people were at the beach.  In fact, you’d have no idea that there was a disease ravaging the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our country because there were very few people wearing masks or practicing social distancing at the beach park.  I don’t claim to know the circumstances of every group of people hanging out in the park, but it felt out of sync with the events transpiring from Covid.

     While I was sitting at the beach, reading the beginning of this book I was met with this quote about climate change in the introductory chapter: “Faced with a crisis that threatens our survival as a species, our entire culture is continuing to do the very thing that caused the crisis, only with an extra dose of elbow grease behind it.”  As I read this chapter, a large family moved a whole picnic’s worth of stuff onto a table nearby and started blasting music.  Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t think twice about a family having a picnic in such a wonderful location but I live in a place where people are adamantly ignore the CDC recommendation of wearing masks in public places, and seeing everyone behaving like it’s just an extended break and there aren’t people on ventilators in our hospital just up Pacific Coast Highway feels icky.  And putting some learning about the impending climate crisis was just a little too much for this young scientist.
There is a silver lining somewhere here, I just know it.

     A recent paper in Nature found that the shut-downs caused by the pandemic have decreased daily global carbon dioxide emissions during the lockdowns by 17% by early April as compared with the average 2019 values (Quere et al., 2020).  While cool, without significant changes to how we as a planet, as a country, as a society decide to return to “normal”, the drop in emissions may be just a small blip in the increasing trend of climate emissions over the past few decades.

     Science is a funny hobby.  Sometimes you get to go out to sea for months on end for your work.  Sometimes you spend hours in front of your computer staring at a blank Word document wondering how exactly you should write the results of your study.  And sometimes we get to wake up at 2:30 in the morning and put on your blazer and pj pants to give a presentation at an international meeting on the research you’ve spent 6 months working on.  You know – that casual first scientific paper presentation vibe you know?

Socially distant science presentation

How did I get here? Great question!

     Back in October of 2019, I was wondering what I should do with my life – I had defended my master’s thesis, finished my seasonal job at the Miami-Dade County Sea Turtle Program, and was mostly done with writing my thesis manuscript.  And I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do: with my time, with my life, with my career.  Those pre-graduation jitters are REAL.  So I started casting around trying to make connections and put in my due diligence towards finding what I wanted to do. 

     Looking around South Florida for work in the field of fisheries science is a surprisingly small pool to draw from.  I was watching the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center job board like a hawk, but in the meantime I was trying to find a way to get my footing in the field. I found The Billfish Foundation through a really cool Miami-based company called Waterlust that makes super cool water apparel AND donates 10% of their profits to different organizations working to help environmental conservation.
ANYWAY The Billfish Foundation is a non-profit with a mission of conserving billfish worldwide through research, education, and advocacy.  For those who don’t know, the grouping “billfish” includes sailfish, marlin, and swordfish – the pelagic fish with big noses, um I mean rostra.  These big pelagics are super cool fish with enormous migrations that can be thousands of miles long.  According to this article in Marlin Magazine a study found that one blue marlin had traveled over four thousand miles in 120 days! That’s SO MUCH SWIMMING!  I love pelagic (open ocean) species because they have cool life histories and are just the epitome of world travelers.  These wanderers span ocean basins in search of food and breeding grounds WHICH IS SO NEAT.

But I digress from the topic at hand…

     Having a love of big pelagics and a strong background in fisheries science, The Billfish Foundation seemed like the perfect place to start my science career after receiving my Masters.  I was pleased to begin the Wintrhop P. Rockefeller Fellowship at the Billfish Foundation in October of 2019.  For this fellowship, I was tasked with writing a paper, and in order to explain the topic of my paper/project we’re going to dive into a brief lesson on fisheries management.

     The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) is an intergovernmental organization that manages tuna and tuna-like species (including billfish!!!) in the Atlantic Ocean.  There are other organizations that manage highly migratory species in other parts of the ocean, but since I went to school in Miami, which is on the Atlantic, we are gonna focus on ICCAT. Because big pelagic species like tuna and billfish wander the oceans, it is most effective to manage them jointly by the countries that fish for those species.  ICCAT was established in 1966 and has been managing highly migratory species ever since!

     SO ICCAT has lots of meetings where they assess the status of the various highly migratory species that they are responsible for managing.  My introduction to the ICCAT was at the 2018 Blue Marlin Stock Assessment as a member of the U.S. delegation where we learned about and discussed the management of – you guessed it – blue marlin!  I also had the privilege of participating in the 2019 White Marlin Stock Assessment.  The way we assess fisheries is through complex mathematical equations.  The standard way we measure “stocks,” or the amount of fish in that population, is something called Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE).  Looking at trends of CPUE over time can indicate how well or poorly a stock of fish is doing in the ocean, since it’s incredibly difficult to physically count every single fish that is out there.

What does this have to do with my project? Everything!

      The models that we used in both the 2018 Blue Marlin and 2019 White Marlin Stock Assessments assumed that for recreational catch (tournament fishing and charter trips) it is as easy in 2020 to catch a billfish as it was in the 1970s.  Both anglers (fishermen) and scientists have expressed concerns that this is not the case, and we should be changing our models to reflect these concerns – which is where my project comes in!  For my paper, I conducted a literature review and 8 personal interviews with anglers and fisheries managers to determine what pieces of technology and fishing gear have made it easier to catch marlin over the last 46 years.

      After 6 months of working on the paper, I finally had the opportunity to present our results to the ICCAT meeting for the Working Group on Stock Assessment Methods on May 7.  This was an incredible opportunity because I presented to scientists from all around the world who work on all sorts of highly migratory species.  However, the meeting started at 12:00 in Madrid which is where ICCAT headquarters are located.  For those keeping track, 3:00am PST is noon in Madrid so I got to wake up and dress up for a presentation to almost 50 other scientists!

     I was talking about the presentation to a friend of mine and had made a joke about playing at being a real grown-up scientist and he laughed and fired back that it couldn’t exactly be considered “playing at being a scientist” when I was presenting my own research at an international meeting.  It didn’t really feel super “real” presenting my results over a Microsoft Teams meeting, but when we got through the end of my presentation and I got to answer questions about the project, it hit me that after almost 7 years since graduating high school with the goal of becoming a marine biologist – I’ve done it!
​
I guess I’m a “real” scientist now.  And I’m so excited to see where this career takes me.

     This weekend I went paddleboarding – a sport and workout which is both immensely peaceful (for me at least) and able to be done while social distancing. Really a big win in my book because let’s be real, I have been LUSTING for some time outside of my backyard/neighborhood/solid land in general.

     While out on the water I had some time to actually breathe and think with clarity that I haven’t really experienced in these odd socially distant times, and while sitting on the Pacific I had some time to process what happened this week.  For my job up in Washington I am going to be the Lead Educator for Deep Green Wilderness where I will be teaching middle- and high-school students about ocean conservation and sailing on a ship called Orion.

     A really exciting part of my new job was attending a conference on the Salish Sea Ecosystem.  For those who are like me and didn’t grow up in northern Washington or BC Canada, the Salish Sea is the ecosystem which encompasses the Puget Sound, Straits of Juan de Fuca, Straits of Georgia, the San Juan Islands AND the watershed that feeds into these bodies of water.

Map of the Salish Sea & Surrounding Basin, Stefan Freelan, WWU, 2009

     The 2020 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference was held online and took place over 2 days that were filled with Zoom sessions and SO MUCH LEARNING for me!  I went to sessions about contaminants in the ecosystem and learned about where large sources of toxins come from in the environment – I went to another session on microplastics in the Salish sea ecosystem which reinforced a lot of the themes I took away from my Master’s thesis, and I got to learn about kelp and the environmental stressors they have been facing over the past decade.

     What stuck the most for me about this conference was the microplastics talk.  Now I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to plastics I am fascinated scientifically and disgusted as a citizen of Earth, but I really am interested in learning more about the fate of much of the debris that we are polluting our oceans with.

     So that I don’t immediately lose all my non-trash scientist readers, microplastics are generally defined as plastics which are smaller than 5 millimeters in diameter.  Typically, microplastics do not get to the ocean in such a small size (though some like nurdles do).  Instead microplastics come from the breakdown of larger plastics – things like bags, bottles, synthetic fibers – take your pick.

Microplastics on Long Island, Bahamas. Photo by Grant Bemis.

But Bree, what causes macroplastics to break down, and why are microplastics so bad?

     WELL dear reader, I’m glad you asked!  Macroplastics undergo what’s called photodegradation, which causes them to go from being recognizable – like the plastics I found while paddleboarding this weekend – to microscopically small.  Now not only do microplastic particles remain a marine pollutant, they also act as tiny toxin sponges, absorbing toxins from the water column like persistent organic pollutants (POPs) (Andrady, 2011; Bakir et al., 2014).  

     This whole microplastic/toxin sponge situation wouldn’t be all that bad if it didn’t do anything after it became a toxin sponge, but microplastics are pretty much everywhere.  Plankton, corals, and other invertebrates (like mussels and clams) are all ingesting microplastics (Desforges et al., 2015; Hall et al., 2015; Shim and Thomposon, 2015; Lusher et al., 2017).  These microplastics carry toxins which get carried up the food chain into higher trophic levels throughout marine ecosystems.  These higher trophic level organisms, including seabirds as well as fish and crustaceans, can also ingest mircoplastics directly (Cole et al., 2016; Lusher et al., 2017).  Basically they’re just the worst.  And it’s not just in the oceans: people like you and me are ingesting microplastics from a wide variety of sources including our DRINKING WATER (Barboza et al., 2018)!

So what you’re saying is microplastics are the worst and they’re everywhere?! Why are you writing this blog Bree? 

      That’s true! Microplastics are pretty ubiquitous, AND there has been some really interesting research done to show just how pervasive the problem is! Take for example experiments like the one the Seattle Aquarium is conducting looking at the amount of microplastics and microfibers in the waters of Puget Sound, or the research done by NOAA employee Kim Parsons and master’s student Jenna Harlacher at the University of Washington studying microplastics in orca poop!

     Although the issue of microplastics is one that scales from some of the smallest particles in the water column all the way up to the top predators in the Salish Sea, the microplastic problem is one that spans all seas – I couldn’t escape it in a short paddle in my local harbor, and I can’t escape it even when I’ve been out to sea for days on end.  As inescapable as plastics are in the marine environment, I believe that talking about them can bring about a positive change too.  I was talking to a colleague about marine debris and my master’s thesis and we got onto the topic of picking up trash when he goes to the beach and it made me smile.  Sometimes being an environmentalist and conservationist makes it seem like it’s me versus the whole world, but in talking to people and attending conferences like the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference I get to remember that there are so many people out there trying to help the planet, and it gets a little less lonely.

     In light of COVID-19 and the quarantine and the huge move across the county and and and I’ve been struggling to get the creative juices flowing to write something for this blog.  Even though there’s a voice in the back of my head yelling about how now is the time to write because for the first time potentially ever since this blog was started, people have time.  And it may be egotistical to think people would spend their time reading my blog with their newfound time BUT WE’RE HERE AND WE’RE WRITING SO HERE WE GO!

     I did a very (un)scientific survey of blog reader (yes I did mean for that to be singular), and 100% of blog reader requested a manatee blog post (shoutout to Katherine thanks girl) – so here are some of the things I find coolest about the manatee.

1) Sailors mistook manatees for mermaids back in the day.  A wild and weird idea in our times but come on. These gentle giants more closely resemble floating rocks than Ariel and her sisters, but I mean to each their own I guess? Now I picked up this incredible tidbit from a book called Manatees for Kids – a book about an almost 11 year old girl who goes to Florida to see manatees.  Guess who was ALSO almost 11  when she visited Florida to see manatees for the first time! It was me!

Definite mermaids spotted in Virgina Key's best lagoon.

I guess this is as good a time as any to address this problem: if any of you readers ever had any questions about why I became a marine biologist the answer lies somewhere in hearing bedtime stories about dolphin’s first day and sea lions roar and an oceans A to Z book rather than I guess normal bedtime stories? I never had a chance.

2) Manatees are herbivores – they’re vegetarians! Like me! I love that we share a love of green things. Are manatees aware that we have similar dietary preferences? Absolutely not. Does it change the sense of camaraderie I feel for this species? OF COURSE NOT.

3) Manatees have 3 toenails on their front flippers. One of their close living relatives is the ELEPHANT! Elephants share these 3 toenails, and as my coworker pointed out in response to this photo…

Look at those toenails AND biologically accurate lettuce! 

​…though elephants are cousins of manatees, their closest living relative is the Hyrax – a mammal found in Africa (if you think this blog is really just an excuse to put my most embarrassing photos on my blog…you’d be absolutely correct).

4) Manatees are HUGE.  And by huge I mean 800 – 1200 pounds and up to 10 feet long, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife.  And I guess that there are a lot of big animals in the ocean, but the scale of swimming with a manatee is hilarious.  Like definitely the biggest animal I’ve been in the water with so far and even though they move slowly there’s such a presence associated with them. 100% was very nervous the first time I swam with them even despite knowing that manatee attacks are VERY VERY rare ;p

5) ​Manatees have their nipples in their armpits! So when the calves nurse they swim up to mom’s flipper and nurse from there (as pictured here!!!)

Manatee calf nursing in Crystal River, FL

6) Mother and baby manatees communicate through chirps – and you can hear the babies communicating with their moms if you’re lucky enough to be in the water with a pair of them! It’s so cool!

7) Manatees migrate between fresh and salt water!  It’s super weird to me because I learned about them as a species that lived in the rivers of Florida, but you can see manatees right off the beach at my grad school – and that was the very place I saw my first manatee while living in Florida.  I screamed so loud everyone in the restaurant stopped to stare at me…I really like them, okay?

Manatees cruising through a saltwater lagoon

8) They have MANATEE LICENSE PLATES IN FLORIDA (this may be a cool point in Florida’s corner over the manatee BUT STILL!!!) And the money generated from the purchasing of these plates goes directly to manatee conservation!

9) Manatees have gone from “Endangered” to merely “Threatened” on the Endangered Species List because of conservation measures and population recovery!  This change in status happened in 2017, but the manatee is on the rise. This of course continues protection for the species but in case you were worried, manatees are also protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act as well as the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act.  Lots of love for these grey nuggets <3

10) Manatees don’t like cold water. In fact, they cannot survive in water colder than 68°F (I mean honestly same) BUT they have a pretty wide range in U.S. coastal waters venturing into the Gulf of Mexico and up the Southeast Coast.  HOWEVER in 2006 one adventurous (or potentially lost?) manatee was spotted in New York City in the Hudson River! Talk about an epic manatee spotting!

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     So anyway.  Was this post just an excuse to post a bunch of pictures of my favorite animal? Yes.  Did I relish the fact that I could also post embarrassing pictures of me in my manatee onesie? Absolutely. But I also hope I have given you at least one reason to smile or shake your head about how excellent these ecologically irrelevant* floating potatoes are.  They are the best animal on earth, contrary to my high school marine ecology teacher’s loving moniker for them of “ocean speed bumps”, these peaceful lil dudes are straight up chilling.

Turning 25 with the best animals on Earth!

​*A note for curious readers.  Why did I call my favorite animal ecologically irrelevant? WELL BOY OH BOY DID YOU COME TO THE RIGHT BLOG. Basically manatees were really just out here minding their own business for a few million years munching on sea grass, making sure the sea grass was in check and BOOM humans come in practically out of nowhere and have the audacity to take over the manatee’s role in the ecosystem AND cause crazy high rates of mortality for manatees leading them to drop precipitously in population numbers.  For those paying attention, this crazy drop in manatee population numbers led to the West Indian Manatee to being listed on the Endangered Species List in the first place.

     In honor of the state I just moved out of, I thought I'd share some about one of the most ridiculous laws in effect in the State of Florida: the Plastic Preemption.

     The State of Florida has a preemption that prevents local governments from passing laws to regulate polystyrene products including plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, and plastic drinking straws to list a few.  Florida’s economy is largely driven by tourism, much of which is ecotourism for our coral reefs, beautiful beaches, and amazing fishing grounds.  As someone who has spent the last 2.5 years of her life learning about plastic and its awful impacts on the environment, I have a few opinions on why this bafflingly backwards piece of legislation is a really really dumb law.

      Plastic pollution is a problem that has been documented to affect not just beach aesthetics but has environmental impacts on resident marine life and can threaten human health.  The effects on marine life include engtanglement of marine mammals and sea turtles, as well as fish, birds, mammals, and over 800 species of marine animals that consume plastics in their environment.  Even if you can push empathy for marine organisms out of your mind, WE ARE DRINKING MICROPLASTICS IN OUR DRINKING WATER!

​      For coastal cities like Miami, the plastic pollution problem is not some abstract environmental problem, but rather is something that we see when visiting the beaches in front of our homes and parks.  Some concerned citizens might argue that cities should have the right to pass legislation that would protect their environment, but the Florida’s preemption has not only deterred, but actually fully prevented cities from doing exactly that.

     Florida Statute section 500 Section 90 has proved a looming threat to cities like Coral Gables trying to ban plastic containers for takeout in businesses.  In 2016, Coral Gables passed a law banning plastic containers and was promptly sued by The Retail Federation on the basis of Florida Statute sections 500.90, 403.708(9), and 403.7033.  The court ruled these statutes unconstitutional and decided that the city’s Ordinance was not preempted.  Following this ruling, the case was then taken to the Third District Court of Appeals which ruled in August that the preemption superseded the City’s ability to pass this Styrofoam ban.  The City of Coral Gables has taken this case to the Florida Supreme Court.

     Multiple cities around the state have passed plastic bags bans in the past year including Surfside, Gainesville, and Palm Beach.  In response to the Court of Appeals ruling however, all three of these cities overturned their bag bans.

   All hope on the plastic problem is not lost however; there are multiple ordinances around Miami-Dade County that were passed prior to Statute section 500.90.  The City of Miami Beach has an Ordinance passed in 2014 which banned the use of Styrofoam city-wide. In addition, the voice of the people can act as a powerful call to action for our government.  When faced with the environmental crisis of toxic algal blooms in 2018, the state created a Blue-Green Algae Task Force, whose job it was to figure out what to do about the environmental crisis.  With this precedent, I think there is definitely the hope to reverse this ridiculous assault on the environment.

     Will I ever stop putting colons in my titles for blog posts? Probably not. But we’re not here to talk about me.  We are here to talk about a personal hero of mine and #nastywoman, Marjory Stoneman Douglas.  Her name is common one in South Florida, but why do I consider this legendary woman a Nasty Woman? Read on and see what this COOL LADY accomplished in her 108-year life.

     Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1890, Marjory grew up in the Northeast U.S. and received her degree in English from Wellesley College in 1912! What a cool lady!  What were women doing in 1912? MOST OF THEM WERE MOST CERTAINLY NOT GRADUATING COLLEGE – ESPECIALLY with a degree in English.

     Marjory left the Northeast, and her garbage brief marriage to a con artist, to work as a reporter for her father’s newspaper in Miami, you know, the newspaper that casually became The Miami Herald.  After serving as a nurse in Europe in World War I, she returned to the Herald to serve as an editor – because why wouldn’t she??? Because she’s the absolute coolest!  Did I mention that she was the ONLY woman working at the Herald? No? WILD. 

     And then in the 1920s, because she had some important things to say, Marjory started her career as an author, writing books and short stories for the rest of her life.  Now naturally, she was known for being an environmentalist (which we will talk about later), and has been recorded fighting for Women’s Suffrage, fighting against slum-lords, and for free milk for babies whose parents needed aid.

     Douglas is best known for her work titled River of Grass about America’s Everglades.  Now as we are all aware, I am a HUGE fan of the Everglades, but Marjory took her passion for this incredible ecosystem to the page and the people.  The book begins: “There are no other Everglades in the world.  They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth; remote, never wholly known.  Nothing anywhere else is like them…” Not only does she capture the essence of a natural place so perfectly in this opening, she goes on to describe the natural history of the region in a way that transports the reader to the swamp where she invites everyone to see and love the Glades for the natural wonder they are.​

     In an NPR article about Douglas, one of her old English teachers, Kevin McCarthy stated Marjory “was fearless, it didn’t matter who she was talking to, with engineers, or governors or even presidents. She believed so strongly in preserving the environment that she was very effective.”  For her environmental activism and writing, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993, when she was 103 for those keeping track of the years, and was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in the year 2000.

Fun fact: Marjory and I love the same Miami parks! Here is one of them (Matheson Hammock) at sunset.

     Douglas lived in a cottage she designed in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami from 1926 until she died there in 1998.  Do I take inspiration from living in the same place as this incredible woman?! Every freaking day!  But she also recreated in the same places I do – in the beautiful Everglades, in Matheson Hammock Park.  She loved southern Florida for what it is and was – a beautiful, wonderful swamp.  And in case I haven’t proved how motivating and incredible this lady was, I’m going to end this blog post on a quote from this lovely lady and real #nastywoman.

     ​“Speak up. Learn to talk  clearly and forcefully in public… Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action … Be depressed, discouraged, and disappointed at failure and the disheartening efforts of ignorance, greed, corruption and bad politics – but never give up. You have to stand up for some things in this world.”

​     My love affair with alligators is one that is well-documented, but it came from an abject fear of them as a child.  Big scary lizard = bad news was about the metric that young Bree had, but since moving to Florida in the Fall of 2017, I have discovered a soft spot for the reptiles that even my college self would have been baffled by.  So how do you go from a manatee-loving, marine biologist to loving a freshwater dwelling ambush predator?  I think it relates to my love of comics and all things nerdy, and of course, the fact that everyone loves a good redemption story.

My embarassing love affair is documented here (we're making the same face)
Photo credit to my father, without whom this moment would have been lost to memory

     Alligators are organisms that are well-associated with Florida (and the South), and have numerous headlines associated with them.  My favorites include:

• Florida Man Arrested for Feeding Alligator Bagels
• Large Alligator Scales Fence at Florida Naval Air Station
• Florida Man Swims With, Rescues 9-foot-long Alligator from Pool
• 11-Foot Gator Breaks into Florida Home by Crashing Through Window
• And finally referring to a 14-foot gator, the New York Times asked in 2018, How Is Chubbs the Alligator These Days? Glad You Asked.

With headlines like this, it’s incredibly hard to believe how a species could go from being placed on the endangered species list as recently as 1967, to a robust population of the over 1 million throughout central and southern Florida?  Well I’m glad you asked… 

The formidable gator in her natural habitat/also my most frequented National Park in Florida - the Everglades

     Alligators are large reptiles found throughout the southeast United States, occupying an important role in the swamp as ambush predators.  They can weigh up to 1,000 pounds and grow to more than 12 feet.  They have characteristic toothy grins (you can see both top and bottom teeth when their mouths are shut), and nice round snouts.  During the winter, they can be found basking in the sun near water bodies – Shark Valley in Everglades National Park is a great place to find these toothy bois.  They are cold-blooded reptiles so they spend that time basking warming up through the scales along their backs.  They feed on fish, invertebrates, frogs, bids, and mammals.

A resting juvenile gator.

     Now personally, I understand the fear of a large dinosaur-looking swamp dragon (or alligator if you insist).  However, fear is not what caused the precarious dip in population: instead it was people hunting for alligator hides which drove their populations into a state where they were listed as federally endangered. The hide trade began in earnest in the 1800s, and by the 1950s, this species was severely depleted. Upon federal protection in 1973, alligator populations were able to begin the process of recovery. Alligator farms also aided in wild population recovery as they allowed for decreased pressure on wild populations to meet the commercial demands for alligator hide.
 
     As of today, you can find alligators in most fresh water bodies in Florida (and throughout the South, but my focus is of course where I live), and they are an amazing sight at that.  I love a good redemption story as much as the next comic book fan, but I really think that the American Alligator is an unsung hero of the American South. 

     Happy 2020! Is it almost the end of January? Absolutely! Do I still date things 2019? Definitely! AND IT WON'T STOP! Gotta love that first few months of the year where I don't have a CLUE what's going on, but I figured it would be a good time to stop and take stock of everything. And it is looking like it is going to be a good year!  So without further ado, here's some updates to This Blog Is Trash.

     First, and foremost, I have some AMAZING new art for the blog, created by my talented little sister Karen Gibbs.  You can see more of her art here!  Woo supporting new artists!  And just look at it! It's SO COOL

     Second, I want to post more frequently than once every few months!  This goal was inspired by the Everglades Coalition Conference (which I just wrote about a week ago! AND JUST LEARNED I CAN LINK BLOG POSTS TO OTHER BLOG POSTS WOW!!).  I had an amazing time, met some amazing people, and was reminded that not everyone knows a scientist, or even what scientists are up to these days!  So I've decided to hold myself accountable - both by writing this post AND putting my blog on my business card.  A BOLD PLAY BUT HERE WE ARE!

     Third, I think I'm going to change up the blog a little bit.  I know that all of my adoring fans only want to hear about trash, fish following floaty things, and of course the occasional extra long stint on big boats (ships... I know but some habits die hard), but I have a lot of friends doing incredible work for their research, jobs, and hobbies so I thought maybe I could include interviews of professional non-trash scientists to see where that takes the blog.  If you have thoughts, concerns, topics of interest, or just want to say "hey", please feel free to leave me a comment, drop me a line, or maybe send me a message in a bottle!  Writing this sort of feels like standing at the top of the Maersk Launcher talking to the ocean because I have no feedback without comments, so feel free to say something (if only to help me out).

     Lastly, I'm really excited to start blogging back up and hope I can find a way to encourage people to keep up!  Happy 2020!

     Early January, I had the pleasure of attending the Everglades Coalition Conference in Captiva Island, a small beautiful place on the Gulf Coast.  The conference was filled with a diverse group of people dedicated to the conservation and restoration of what has come to be one of my favorite National Parks.  The weekend was filled with invigorating discussions of the challenges the Everglades faces including limited water flow, decreased space (because of pesky people moving onto Everglades land), as well as the all-present problem of pollution.  To a newly inspired Everglades advocate, these challenges seem insurmountable, however, without skipping a beat the panelists at the conference presented numerous ways to face each of the listed challenges.  The sessions were filled with nods to environmentalism - "Climate Voter" buttons, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax making his appearance on one attendee's shoes - and it was frankly inspiring to be in a room of people not daunted by the local apathy or corporate greed which threatens the very existence of our Park.  A Park that I might add that is not only valued in the United States as a region of important value, but has also been listed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The 2020 Everglades Coalition Conference Scholarship Recipients (photographed by Cara Capp).

Jumping dolphins in Captiva Sound

Mangroves in the morning sun

     We did it!  And by "we", I of course mean Me, Myself, and I.  But here we are!  The other side of grad school.  I received my masters!  Bree Gibbs, Master of Science at your service!  So what did it take?  Let's take a walk back through what's gone down since leaving the Maersk Launcher behind.

Steps to Receiving My Master of Science After October 2018:

1. Wait.  I had to sit on my heels and wait for my data to be collected.  It was a lot of fun and a huge learning experience going out to sea, but in the end I had to sit and wait to see whether Wilson aggregated fish using my buoys.  This step proved immensely difficult because I was so excited to see what was going to happen.
2. Panic.  This step ended up getting repeated a whole lot for me because I had to learn to deal with what experimental science throws at you - which is A LOT of surprises.  One surprise was the failure of my buoys to either stay attached to Wilson or you know getting smashed like Bob the buoy during the Pacific Trials (RIP).  Not only did this hurt because I was really attached to my buoys, but also this lessened the total amount of data I was able to collect.  Another surprise was Wilson having a critical failure thus bringing with it the end of my data collection.
3. Look at the data.  This step proved difficult because I collected data from 6 buoys.  Each buoy was collecting one sounding every three hours for the entire duration of their deployment, the longest of which was about 2.5 months.  SO. MANY. POINTS.
4. Defend my results.  Arguably the scariest thing to happen since my Bat Mitzvah at 13, I had to defend my thesis to my committee and all of the amazing friends that came over to watch my presentation.  Absolutely exhilarating and terrifying.
5. Write!  So much of science is writing!!!  I wish someone had told me that before I chose to chase this crazy career path.  Anyway.  The writing of my manuscript took an embarassingly long time, but it is now available for anyone and everyone to read and download here.  This step is over-simplified here, as it took a bunch of iterations and a lot of rethinking how to talk about what happened with my committee but writing (and a few tears here and there) was the majority of what happened this summer and fall.
6. Graduate!!! In December, my degree was officially conferred and I can now say with some pride that I have my own business cards! Wow! Crazy how I'm wayyy too excited about something as mundane as business cards but HERE WE ARE!

Me rocking my best Marine Biology Ms Frizzle dress and getting ready to rock a defense presentation pictured above.

     So I guess we understand that Post Grad Joy but where does the existential dread come into it?  Let me let you in on a little secret: it's really hard to get a job in today's world.  That whole "go knocking on some doors" method really hasn't panned out, and honestly I've been more than a little disappointed to learn that the game in getting a job has more to do with who you know than your qualifications for the job at hand.

     That said it hasn't been all bad!  I've picked up a couple of jobs working in positions I really didn't expect, and yet love just the same.  The main place I've been spending my time has been working for Key News, a local online newspaper where I have had the opportunity to learn about the ins and outs of being a journalist. I even get to write about an article a week and am the self-dubbed "Environmental Contributor" - getting to write about topics that I care about while also improving my computer skills? Dream come true!  In addition to exploring the world through a journalist's eyes, I am also proud to announce that I am The Billfish Foundation's Winthrop P. Rockefeller Fellow!  This means that I get to continue using my skills as a scientist to work on a project where I am analyzing the changes in technology and gear used to capture billfish since the 1970s!  It's a fun project with a lot of moving parts and has been really eye opening in a way that I couldn't get from sitting in a classroom!  Both organizations are non-profits, which is pretty cool too!  Finally, I'm going to be starting 2020 at YET ANOTHER NON PROFIT and I'm thrilled to announce that I am going to be starting work as the National Parks Conservation Association's first Everglades Restoration Fellow.  This position will be involved in advocacy and outreach, which will be an amazing opportunity to give back to one of the most incredible places in South Florida while also learning about the legal side of protecting natural areas.  All in all I'm really excited to be moving forward in life but also trying to dampen the existential fear that set in as soon as I realized I needed to find a new "big girl" job to go with my "big girl" degree.

Bree Gibbs, Official Trash Scientist

      For now, I live in Miami-Dade County Florida, where sea turtle nesting season (typically) ranges from May 1 to October 31.  Why am I writing about it in November? Well this is the first time I've had to catch a break and take a moment to breathe and reflect on the crazy year that's almost over!  But beyond the personal stuff - let's talk turtles!

     Given that I grew up on the West Coast, I knew next to nothing about sea turtle ecology when I started working.  In the 6 months I had the pleasure of working with sea turtles I learned a lot, and so I thought I'd take this time to get up on my soapbox to share some of that knowledge. :) 

     Here in Miami, we have 3 main species of turtles that nest: Loggerhead (Caretta caretta), Green (Chelonia mydas), and Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea).  In addition to the 3 main nesting species, we have 2 additional species that like to hang out in Miami waters - the Hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) and Kemp's Ridley (Lepidochelys kempi).

     Sea turtles have a pretty cool life cycle, starting their lives as tiny little hatchlings that emerge from the sand at night. These hatchlings crawl towards the ocean where they swim OUT and they swim FAR to spend their young years out in the open ocean.  Shockingly, only about 1 in 100 hatchlings that makes it to the ocean survive to adulthood.  That statistic is CRAZY - how do we have any turtles today? Especially considering that they were hunted to near extinction not so long ago (sea turtles are currently protected under the Endangered Species List in 1973).  But I digress.  Once they make it to sexual maturity, the sea turtles move inshore during breeding season to mate.  After breeding males will return to their offshore existence - they never come back on land after leaving it as a hatchling! - whereas females will come up on shore to lay their nests.  Depending on the species, sea turtles can nest a few times a season (2-5 times), laying between 80 and 120 eggs per nest!  These eggs will incubate in the sand and, like other reptiles, the sex of the hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the sand around the nest.  Warmer sands make female turtles and cooler sands make male turtles - so we say that we get Hot Chicks and Cool Dudes, a phrase which gave me no end of amusement throughout the season.

So what do you do as a sea turtle nest monitor here?

     Well, as I mentioned in my first post on turtles in April, we get up early.  An hour before the sunrise we get to work, and begin surveying half an hour before the sunrise so we can see the tracks with the best accuracy (in addition to the perk that there are fewest people on the beach at this time of morning).

Loggerhead sea turtle tracks.  Each species has a unique pattern to their track making identifying the turtle easy even though we haven't seen the turtle nesting typically.

When we locate tracks we have to take data on whether the crawl resulted in a nest or not. If it resulted in no nesting attempt, this is called a "false crawl".  Mother sea turtles will false crawl for numerous reasons including people or anthropogenic lights disturbing her, her not liking the sand, or other reasons.  However, if the crawl results in nesting, we get to mark off the nest to make sure that no one interferes with the incubating eggs.

A loggerhead sea turtle nest. Similar to how each sea turtle species has species-specific tracks, each species that nests in Miami has a specific nest shape!

After the eggs incubate and hatch, the county sea turtle nest monitors get to dig into the nest to take data on the nest itself like how many eggs hatched.  Sometimes, we'd get stragglers too - hatchlings that didn't quite make it out of the nest with their brothers and sisters.  By far this was my favorite part of working with the sea turtles because these were the only living turtles we got to see while working!  When we'd get these stragglers, we'd get to let them rest in a safe and dark environment and let them go at night.  The first hatchling release I got to do was probably one of the most magical moments I've experienced to date.  And to be entirely honest, I felt a little like Moana in the first scene of the movie where she helps the baby turtle safely to the sea.  And I think that's about as close to being a Disney princess as I'm ever going to get so I guess there's really not much more I can look forward to in my career (I'm KIDDING). 

A loggerhead hatchling to complete our loggerhead nesting adventure.

A leatherback hatchling because I just think they are the coolest turtles around. Not gonna lie, I love how derpy they look.  Leatherbacks spend the vast majority of their lives in the open ocean which is why they have enormous flippers.  As babies I think it really just makes them look disproportionate and I LOVE it. 

**All photos in this section of the post were taken by me in Miami-Dade County under FWC Permit number 19-017.

     A really large concern that I feel after working in Miami is the problem of artificial lighting.  Artificial lighting causes sea turtles (both adult and hatchling) to become disoriented.  Artificial lighting leads to the death of thousands hatchlings every year in Florida.  Why does this happen?  Great question!  To begin our story, sea turtles evolved millions of years ago and as a way to get to the water, hatchlings have evolved to emerge from the sand and go towards the brightest horizon.  On a secluded beach (or a beach before civilization), the brightest horizon will be the sky and  horizon as well as the reflection of the stars on the ocean.  This all changes when we throw people and big cities into the equation.  If you've ever been outside at night in Miami, you know how BRIGHT the city is - and from the water, you can see the glow of downtown for an alarming distance off the coast.  This has deadly implications for our hatchling sea turtles, and can also lead to the disorientation of mother sea turtles as they attempt to nest.  All in all, it is a heartbreaking situation with a relatively easy solution.  Sea turtles are not disturbed or disoriented by long wavelength light.  Specifically, amber lighting is particularly good for sea turtles and allows us humans to be able to see at night without leaving areas unlit. Win win, right?  This solution is only kind of effective here in Miami because although we have lighting ordinances, they are poorly enforced, which leads to the disorientation of dozens if not hundreds of hatchlings each year.

     Another problem associated with turtles is plastic.  Plastic affects not only adults sea turtles, which commonly mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, but also recently hatched turtles, which will eat plastic instead of food particles and die.  Another viral video features a scientist removing a plastic straw from the nostril of a sea turtle (it's really graphic so please take this as warning).  Obviously the plastic issue is one that is near and dear to my heart, but it is manifesting in these peaceful, incredible creatures that have been on Earth a lot longer than we have.  Of course, the solution to this problem is one that has far reaching implications, but the use of plastic bags and straws and products can be mitigated by exercising consumer choice and spending money where you want to see it going - such as to organization working to decrease the amount of plastic in the oceans or by reducing your own plastic footprint.  (I'm getting off my soapbox now XD)

     Green sea turtles (mostly) contract a disease called Fibropapillomatosis (FP) which manifests in tumors.  These tumors can hinder turtles numerous aspects of their life including swimming, feeding, and seeing.  This disease can be transferred turtle to turtle through touch, and is commonly transferred through sexual activity.  Though these tumors can lead to death, they can also be removed by sea turtle hospitals with the appropriate facilities. :) Yay for there being hope sometimes.

A healthy green sea turtle I spotted snorkeling in Maui!

     I went to a conference in November that reminded me of why I love the scientific community - the passion, the sharing of ideas, and the optimism facing the future.  And then life caught up with me - being a student enrolled in classes, trying to finish my thesis in time, financial uncertainty in facing graduation without a job lined up - the normal parts of being a graduate student, I guess.  But I started this blog to communicate what science I'm involved in!  And that hasn't been happening!  So here we go!

     No one told me that science would be so much writing.  You hear jokes all the time about how scientists do science because they were bad in English and BOY that was incorrect.  I have to write all the time - essays for classes, my thesis is basically a short book I'm writing about how and why I did what I did for my thesis, and then if I want to go further into science there's the grant and proposal writing for funding - IT NEVER ENDS!!!  But it's kind of cool because you go from texting your friends in emojis and memes to having a super professional voice that makes you sound like a PRO - all (sometimes) within minutes of each other!  Crazy world we live in!!!  Anyway...

     I got a new job!  I'm working for Miami-Dade County (yup that's still Florida) as a part-time seasonal Turtle Nest Monitor.  Though it's a position I never thought I'd come anywhere near in my professional field, it is something that makes sense given my passion for conservation and education.  I get to aid in monitoring the beaches in Miami-Dade County for nesting by the sea turtle species that come up onshore at night to nest!  This entails getting to the beach before the sun comes up, and checking for evidence of turtles and on occasion doing outreach events with the public!!  What an amazing way to get to participate in conservation (turtles are a federally protected species) AND getting to teach people about some of our aquatic neighbors!!!  Loving life right now despite the impending deadlines of finishing my thesis!

Here's a rad view of my new "office" at one of Miami's incredible beaches that we survey.  ...yes this is a sunrise - I'm back to early-bird mornings!

     Hello all (if anyone is still reading XD) and welcome to 2019!  The year ended with some rough news on the Wilson/System 001 front, but I'm here to talk about why though this news is disappointing, this is an important step in the scientific method.

     The scientific method is what allows us to move forward in the world - we get to test hypotheses in a rigorous way, but a lot of the process is riddled with what may be perceived as failures by some, but are just as important as, if not more important than, the "successes".

     For those that didn't spend nearly every class in both undergrad and masters going over it, the scientific method involves the following steps:

1. Ask a question
2. Do background research
3. Construct a hypothesis
4. Test with an experiment** (make sure your procedure works)
5. Analyze data and draw conclusions
6. COMMUNICATE RESULTS

That step 4 is a tricky one, and the reason it is denoted with two asterisks is because that is the step where the barrier is today!  We are testing.  And you know what?  We are learning from what happened and are endeavoring to integrate our learning into the next phase of the trials.  Because even a project that has been modeled over and over, things still go wrong in nature.  It happens all the time!  So The Ocean Cleanup is going to pick up and try again - because that's science!