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.
5 Comments
Lisa Brault
5/14/2020 09:05:21 pm
So cute. Like Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. I’m reading your blog and looking at your professional picture and then I scroll down and see the pj’s. Too funny! I’m enjoying your blog. Love to you, Lisa
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Michael Gibbs
5/15/2020 09:25:32 am
Well done Bree! Now you can honestly say "Back off man, I'm a scientist!"
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Jenni Snibbe
5/15/2020 09:38:08 pm
So proud and happy for you Bree! Congratulations!!!! Welcome to the world of Biologist's! More specifically Marine Biologist! Yeah!!!!❤
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Natalie
5/16/2020 08:15:54 am
I like big pelagics and I can not lie
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Ryan D
5/17/2020 06:43:56 pm
Awesome Bree, and congrats! In my lab we talk often about how researchers - from grad students to postdocs, techs and lab managers - frequently don't feel like they're "real scientists" yet. But of course we're all actually real scientists and have been for some time. So congrats on being a real scientist, but I suspect you've been one for longer than you're giving yourself credit for :)
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AuthorBree Gibbs, here. I'm a recent Master's Grad just trying to share what it's like to be a trash scientist (for those who aren't in the know, I'm a marine biologist). Categories
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