Events

New fellowship offers outreach experience for DMS students!

Posted on September 17, 2024September 17, 2024 by Hannes Baumann

The New Generation of Marine Scientists and Stewards Fellowship is a new initiative led by Dr. Zofia Baumann, who has secured funding for the Department of Marine Sciences to award $1,500 to each of three graduate students for the academic year 2024/25. The inaugural recipients of this fellowship are Anagha Payyambally, Emily Watling, and Bernard Akaawase, who bring a rich diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and expertise to share with K-12 students in Groton, CT.

Located in the southeastern corner of Connecticut, Groton is part of the ancestral territory of the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Nipmuc, and Lenape Peoples, who have been stewards of this land for generations. Groton is also classified as an Environmental Justice Community, underscoring the importance of land and water stewardship to protect the marine ecosystems that coastal communities, including Groton, rely on. Scientific inquiry is a powerful tool that can empower people to become environmental stewards, and the fellowship recipients will engage with K-12 students in Groton to share their unique perspectives on this process.

Anagha Payyambally is a first-generation graduate student from India pursuing a Ph.D. in chemical oceanography. She understands the immense value of sharing ideas with the younger generation and is eager to contribute to this initiative.

Emily Watling, a New England native passionate about the marine environment, is working toward her M.S. with a focus on marine ecology. She is excited to collaborate with the other fellows and bring a "storm of ideas" to the table.

Bernard Akaawase, originally from Nigeria, is a third-year Ph.D. student specializing in physical oceanography. Committed to engaging with the younger generation, he has also served as the community outreach chair for the Graduate Students of Color Association (GSCA) at UConn.

As the fellows embark on this journey, stay tuned for updates on their activities and impact in the Groton community.

Long Island Sound Shell Day 2023

Posted on September 14, 2023June 19, 2024 by Lauren Barrett

Shell Day logo, credit: Austin Pugh, NECAN

On 24 August, 2023, 10 community science organizations, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT-DEEP) and the University of Connecticut collaborated to simultaneously sample total alkalinity in the embayments and rivers bordering Long Island Sound (LIS). Led by DMS PhD Candidate Lauren Barrett, the event was a regional repeat of the 2019 effort led across New England by the Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (NECAN, http://necan.org/ShellDay).

The participating groups sampled for total alkalinity (TA) and hydrographic variables such as salinity and temperature during low, mid-, and high tides, meaning the spatial variation in alkalinity across the Sound. Seawater alkalinity requires high precision, expensive instrumentation and a skilled analyst, and thus typical observations of TA in LIS conducted by a single or a few researchers require that spatially separate samples also have a temporal difference. However, TA varies across diel and tidal cycles, so the spatial and temporal difference is important to parse. The collaborative effort of Shell Day allowed for a spatial identification of TA trends in LIS without the confounding temporal variation.

Shell Day 2023 was a successful event. Despite some mild rain in the afternoon, community scientists weathered the storm and still provided high-quality samples, which are currently undergoing TA analysis at UConn. The results of this work will be interpreted in the context of open LIS data (available through the Vlahos lab at UConn) and the data collected during Shell Day 2019. This work will be presented to the LIS Science Technical and Advisory Committee (STAC) this fall as well as to the participating organizations at a meeting which is to be determined.

Finally in person again: Feng Graduate Research Colloquium 2023!

Posted on June 2, 2023June 13, 2023 by Hannes Baumann

18 May 2023. After a COVID-forced hiatus of more than two years, our department finally held a successful Feng graduate student research colloquium in person again. The Feng Graduate Research Colloquium has been a tradition in the Marine Sciences Department since 1996. Named after the first Head of the Department of Marine Sciences, Dr. Sung Y. Feng, the colloquium was started by Prof. Hans Dam. The colloquium acts as a conference in which students receive friendly, constructive criticism, and have the opportunity to work on developing their abstract writing, leadership, and scientific communication skills. The Colloquium is funded by the Department of Marine Sciences and the S.Y. Feng Scholarship Fund.

This years colloquium featured 16 oral presentations and 20 posters spanning the entire diversity of marine research in our department. Special thanks to the student organizers and Debra Schuler for the help behind the scenes.

See the colloquium list of talks and poster presentations, including abstracts

“Harmony of Nature”: environmental data becomes music

Posted on December 2, 2022December 5, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

By Ewaldo Leitao.

Science communication has many flavors, kinds, and sounds. One way by which that can happen is when nature or science produce “noise” that can be channeled into sounds. That can be done using architecture (Sea Organ), or reinterpreting a field of science (Quantum Computer Music). Sometimes, this combination of sound and science can be a deliberate choice, creating music.

DMS student Molly James and musician Hea Youn Chung (Sophy) combined their expertises and interests to explore this intersection between science and music. Molly plays trombone in her free time at a community orchestra. Sophy is a professional pianist and teacher at Yewon Arts School (Seoul, South Korea) who did her Master of Music degree in Piano Performance at The Juilliard School. What initially joined these two at the dead of the pandemic was a mutual language assistance: Molly wanted to learn Korean, and Sophy, back in South Korea, wanted to continue practicing English.

And that’s how “Harmony of Nature” was born. A beautiful collaboration that converts natural phenomena into sounds through coding technology and expresses them in classical music. The project was funded by the Art & Tech program by Arts Council Korea. The data was collected using temperature loggers deployed in several sites across South Korea, along with freely available data from several spots. “I statistically analyzed this data and created multiple graphs using the open-source coding language Python. I shared them with Sophy and discussed the scientific interpretations. Together, we collaborated on what scientific aspects became what musical aspects.” said Molly, about the process of data collection and curation, prior to its translation into music.

“Like expressing human emotions through musical instruments, I have always wanted to express natural phenomena that we cannot see but can feel through sound. While envisioning this project, I focused on conveying natural phenomena through sound.” said Sophy. “For various expressions, I try to incorporate nuances such as shape and texture into the performance. In this project, the weight of the waves, the ebb and flow of the waves, the temperature changes, and the appearance of rain can be realized by various musical elements such as rhythm, dynamics, etc.”

The composition “One Week in Incheon” directly came from hourly air temperature measurements collected at a weather station by the Korean Meteorological Administration Incheon branch 112. Other data, such as wave height, flow and ebb tides, were also analyzed in order to compose some pieces. “During this performance, I hope you can feel changes in temperatures, drops of rain, speed of the winds, and height of the waves”, says Molly. More songs can be found on Spotify or AppleMusic.

Science needs to reach out to the public, informing in different, inventive, artistic ways. Art is powerful. Collaborations between science and art will thrive as each part can use their unique skills to result in beautiful projects, such as this one.

DMS grad students do outreach in local elementary school

Posted on December 2, 2022December 2, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

By Ewaldo Leitao.

Academic institutions have a tendency to stay in the “Ivory Tower” and be distant from their surrounding communities. Scientific communication and outreach is a great way to minimize the gap between institutions and their communities, and to educate the new generation, especially about environmental awareness. We in the Marine Sciences Department try our best to be aware of this and reach out to communities in order to explain what we do. During the Ocean Week (June 7-9), Prof. Hannes Baumann and Dr. Zosia Baumann, reached out to the Catherine Kolnaski Steam Magnet School, in Groton/CT to give science talks about various marine science topics.

Zosia introduced the Long Island Sound and its importance to 2nd grade students. Then the kids split up to visit various stations. The stations were led by graduate students Ewaldo Leitão, Lingjie Zhou, Max Zavell, Jenna O’del (URI), Molly James, and Dr. Susan Smith. Each one showcased their area of expertise, but catered to 2nd graders.

There were four different stations. Ewaldo and Susan explained plankton and their importance, despite their tiny size, connecting with the kids using the famous Plankton from SpongeBob Squarepants as an example and how it was created based on copepods. To grab kids' attention, organisms were displayed in many different ways, with pictures, a dissecting scope that had a sample with shrimp, baby starfish, a concentrated sample of copepods, and finally a copepod under the microscope so that kids could see how similar copepods are to the Plankton.

Lingjie introduced the concept of DNA, and made the kids build their own DNA strand by using gummy candies and straws. She explained the bases of the DNA using gummies with different colors to represent each, and how they match in the strand. As a motivation, the kids could take their own DNA strand candy home.

Max and Jenna were explaining fish physiology and behavior. They used cleared and stained specimens to show bones and cartilage of the fish. These can determine important fish behavior such as schooling, which is easily observable in the wild.

Finally Molly explained the physics of the ocean. Using dyes to color water with different salinities, she demonstrated how salty water is denser and therefore stays in the bottom of the less dense, freshwater. These are not just important concepts for the ocean, it is why the kids can buoy easier in the ocean compared to lakes.

There’s an inherent joy and challenge in explaining scientific concepts to kids. We, scientists, are often told to have our elevator pitch in many levels of expertise, in order to explain what we do to our mom and to a potential employer. But explaining to kids is a completely different game. They can have a rather short attention span and yet get easily fascinated by new things. Therefore, explaining scientific concepts requires a combination of teaching them in an exciting way, that is also engaging but simplified so that they are able to retain the knowledge.

Having said that, it is a delight to end these interactions by asking the kids what they have learned, and listening to their excitement when they describe what they have just seen and experienced. Scientific outreach to our youngest generation is a great way to create environmental awareness and to build minds who will take better care of our planet.

Shell recycling will help restore oysters in Long Island Sound

Posted on November 7, 2022November 7, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

By Elaina Hancock.

7 November 2022. An unexpected find of a healthy, well-established oyster reef tucked away in a shoreline park inspired UConn Marine Science researcher Zofia Baumann to study ways to help these vital ecosystem engineers make a comeback.

Oyster habitats were largely destroyed by development, over-harvesting, and pollution, but in Long Island Sound, their numbers might be on the rise. Baumann and others hope to help restore Connecticut’s oyster populations.

Oysters build habitats where many species flourish, they improve water quality and make shorelines more resilient to erosion, but they need old shells to start building on. The site that became the focus of the project is one where oyster shells were deposited. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of shells in Connecticut and addressing this problem is the primary goal.

The project brings together members of the community, shellfish farmers, and regulators, as Baumann says, this effort relies on the community, otherwise, it will not work.

A soccer match to honor Dennis Arbige’s service for DMS

Posted on September 24, 2022September 24, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

23 September 2022. On this day, we honored the long years of service of Dennis Arbige, who is officially retiring as the building manager this summer (he’s still very much around, helping with the transition). We all know Dennis as the kind force keeping the wheels from falling off of our beloved building, battling with environmental chambers, autoclaves, and a gazillion other things, while coordinating many of the various upkeeps over the years. But Dennis is also a gifted electrician and underwater technology buff, who has accompanied several ROV missions in the past.

And in addition, many of us simply love Dennis as the cornerstone of one of DMS’ most sacred traditions: the Friday afternoon co-ed soccer game!
For that reason, we planned to celebrate Dennis’ service this Friday in style!

Best of luck, Dennis, for your next move in life.
Please, if you can, keep playing soccer with us!