Graduate student Mackenzie Blanusa participates in NASA S-MODE cruise

Posted on October 29, 2022October 29, 2022 by Manning, Cara

Graduate student Mackenzie Blanusa (a MSc student in Professor Cesar Rocha’s group) has written a blog post about her experience on the NASA Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) research cruise.

Check it out here!

Mackenzie says: “I had been patiently waiting and dreaming about this research cruise for months. Yet a few days before traveling from Connecticut to Oregon for ship mobilization, I couldn’t shake a feeling of denial – like I couldn’t believe I was really going to be out in the Pacific Ocean on a research vessel for an entire month. … S-MODE is wrapping up in a few days and I’ll be on my way back home. The sense of denial I once felt has been replaced with self-confidence and motivation to pursue a career as a seagoing oceanographer. I have learned so much from all the other scientists on board who are more than happy to share their knowledge with a curious graduate student. Although S-MODE is ending, I know this is just the beginning of my journeys at sea.”

Congratulations to Mackenzie and the team on a successful expedition, and we look forward to seeing you back on campus!

Mackenzie (left) and Avery Snyder (right) getting ready to deploy a mixed layer float. Credit: Alex Kinsella

Marine Sciences faculty and students participate in Early College Experience event

Posted on October 4, 2022October 5, 2022 by Manning, Cara

On September 23, 2022, the Department of Marine Sciences helped to welcome 200 students from 12 high schools across Connecticut to the Avery Point campus for the annual Early College Experience Cardboard Boat Race event. These students are taking UConn courses at their local high schools and also prepared boats made only from cardboard and duct tape, which they raced in the waters off of Avery Point in the afternoon.

Prior to the races, Professor Matassa shared a presentation on the life of an ecologist and Professor Manning described how oceanographers use new technology to study changing ocean chemistry. Graduate students Mackenzie Blanusa and Riley Pena led a demonstration on the buoyancy of different vegetables. We look forward to seeing some of these high school students join the UConn Husky family in the future!

Congratulations are also on order for Marine Sciences undergraduate Devan Barnum who won the Avery Point community cardboard boat race on September 21, on behalf of the men’s basketball team!

Check out this article in The Day for more photos of the boat race.

The photos below were taken during the event and are provided by Michael Illuzzi, Gordon Daigle and Cara Manning.
Top: Graduate Students Riley Pena and Mackenzie Blanusa led a demonstration on buoyancy.
Middle: Prof. Matassa conducts a presentation on the life of an ecologist
Bottom: Prof. Manning dressed as a pH indicator for a presentation on changing ocean chemistry.

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!

The Arctic is not so Boron!

Posted on September 21, 2022December 2, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

Professor Penny Vlahos investigates what happens with the ocean chemistry at the marginal ice zones in her recent publication

By Ewaldo Leitao.

The Arctic Ocean is undergoing rapid changes due to climate change. Increasing temperatures result in decreasing sea-ice extent, constant decreasing and thinning of permanent sea-ice caps. Some projections even show a completely ice-free Summer by 2050!

Another consequence of climate change is ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric CO2. That leads to the decrease in water pH and changes in carbon chemistry dynamics. The Arctic may be a small ocean (3% of total oceans area) but it has an important contribution to carbon uptake (10%). Therefore, it is necessary to understand the impact of these changes across the oceans, including the Arctic, in order to be prepared for it.

Some chemical elements, such as boron, contribute to the ocean’s capacity to resist changes in pH, that is ocean’s alkalinity. Boron, in combination with salinity, has been used as a universal rule in the open ocean (boron to salinity ratio) in order to understand the contribution of boron to alkalinity, and therefore ocean carbon chemistry. But how does that change in the less saline areas, such as the marginal ice zones of the Arctic?

In the recent paper published in Nature Communications, Prof. Penny Vlahos and graduate student Lauren Barrett observed that, when measured in low salinity areas (marginal ice zones), the boron to salinity ratio deviates from the expected in open oceans. In a cruise that took place in May of 2021 (you can read more about the cruise here), researchers were surprised to find significant deviations in the boron to salinity ratios in ice and brine samples. Lower water temperature and lower salinity alters the exchange between boric acid and borate, which is used to determine the contribution of boron to sea water alkalinity (capacity of water to resist changes in pH and acidification), driving this deviation of the boron to salinity ratio compared to open ocean waters.

The unique microenvironment of the marginal ice zones creates a very dynamic system. As seawater freezes, salts are rejected, but there is still a liquid region between ice crystals, called brine channels. These channels allow boron to undergo inorganic changes that may result in the variations observed in some of the samples, increasing the variability of boron to salinity ratio observed in these Arctic areas.

Prior to boarding the research vessel, researchers had to quarantine for two weeks. But this was a valuable time to Lauren Barrett. “Over quarantine I spent a lot of time reading about the various uncertainties that other authors encountered in accurately and precisely constraining the carbonate system in this highly heterogeneous environment. The boron to salinity ratios that we present here warn against applying universal ratios constrained in the open ocean to marginal ice zones and ice environments.” says Lauren.

Lauren also shared a little bit about her experience: “I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with our international coauthors. The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of marine science is one of my favorite aspects of working in this field. This research cruise was a great experience both personally and professionally, and I continue to be grateful to work in a field where cruising and getting to see polar bears is all in a day's work.”

The Arctic is an important sink of carbon and yet highly susceptible to climate change. Therefore, understanding detailed information of this system, instead of applying universal ratios, is necessary in order to better understand the carbon chemistry of the Arctic and be prepared for the consequences of climate change.

Prof. Rob Mason presented with Lifetime Achievement Award

Posted on September 21, 2022September 21, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

July 2022. DMS is proud to announce that Prof. Rob Mason was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award during this years ICMGP2022 (International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant). A big, heartfelt congratulations to this award, Rob!

Here is what the awarding committee said about Prof. Mason lifetime achievements:
Cross-posted from ICMGP2022

Dr. Robert (Rob) Mason has been a professor of Marine Sciences, with a joint appointment in Chemistry, at the University of Connecticut (UConn) since 2005. Prior to his current position he was a faculty member at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Studies, from 1994 to 2005. After graduating from UConn in 1991 with a PhD in Marine Sciences, under Dr. Bill Fitzgerald, he completed a post-doc at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts working with Drs. Francois Morel and Harry Hemond. Rob completed his undergraduate training in Analytical Chemistry in Durban, South Africa (RSA) and his MS at the University of Cape Town in 1983. Besides his academic studies and achievements, he has worked in research and development and for the Sea Fisheries Research Institute in Cape Town, RSA, studying oil pollution, and also completed 2 years as a program officer for the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

Rob has authored and co-authored over 230 scientific papers and book chapters, with over 27,485 citations with an H-index of 85 (Google Scholar). His four highest cited papers have more than 1000 citations each. He has co-edited four books and edited 6 special issues of journals focusing on large research activities, such as multi-investigator ocean cruises and conferences. He published the book Trace Metals in Aquatic Systems. Rob and his research group have presented papers at more than 400 national and international meetings, and he has been invited to present his research at institutions globally. Rob has attended all the International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP) conferences, except the first conference in Sweden when he was denied a visa due to the cultural boycott against South Africans that was in place due to the continuation of apartheid. He has been a ICMGP plenary speaker on two occasions (Minamata in 2004 and Nova Scotia in 2011). He has been on the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) for a number of the ICMGP conferences, and was an Executive Committee Member for the 2017 conference in Providence, Rhode Island, and is for the 2022 virtual meeting. He has been on the organizing committee and a SSC member for other international conferences, including the International Conference on Heavy Metals in the Environment (ICHMET), where he was a plenary speaker in 2018, and the International Estuarine Biogeochemistry Symposium (IEBS), which he hosted in 2004. He has chaired sessions at most of the ICMGP meetings and at the other conferences that he has attended.
continued below

His mentoring activities have resulted in 13 PhD and 8 MS theses, where he has been the major advisor, and he has been a committee member for many other graduate students. Eighty percent of his graduate students have been women and, besides the USA, his students have come from Africa and Asia. He has been an external examiner for PhD students in Canada, Europe and South Africa. He has also mentored more than 10 post-docs and visiting scientists from around the world, including Fulbright Scholars and students/post-docs from Europe and Asia. He has also had many high school and undergraduate students working in his laboratories over the years. He has taught classes throughout his career, and has always incorporated his research into his teaching. He expects to continue to teach classes in Chemical Oceanography, Trace Metals and Isotopes and Environmental Chemistry in the future.

He has collaborated extensively with scientists from around the world and has been involved in synthesis and other activities through national and international organizations including the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), and other UN organizations, and their partnership programs, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), and the Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollutants (HTAP) initiative. He has been actively involved in communicating science to policy makers both in the USA and globally. He has been involved in many activities as a science advisor to federal, state and local organizations and industry related to contaminated sites and/or the impacts of human activities on local waters and biota, and subsequently humans and wildlife, and in their remediation.

Rob’s research has been funded by numerous federal and state agencies, as well as from non-governmental organizations, with the majority of his funding from the NSF (30 grants). He has been part of long-term studies, such as the METAALICUS Project, the GEOTRACES Program and studies on mercury in coastal environments in collaboration with colleagues at Dartmouth College. He has collaborated extensively with scientists in America, Europe, Asia and Africa. His research has taken him to the far corners of the Earth, including remote regions of the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. He has participated in 9 open ocean cruises during his career, and been chief scientist on more than one occasion, and has been involved in many coastal cruises and terrestrial studies. He has conducted research in Southern Africa and was also a Fulbright Scholar doing studies in West Africa related to artisanal gold mining (ASGM) impacts on the environment.

Rob recently participated in a research cruise in the Arctic Ocean and his post-doc was involved in another cruise around Iceland in 2021. He expects to continue his open ocean studies going forward, and hopes to remain involved in the GEOTRACES program. He is continuing with studies of Hg interactions in coastal waters, and the relationship between Hg cycling and transformation and those of other elements, such as selenium. He is currently the major advisor/co-advisor of 5 PhD students and is actively involved in their research, and is also actively writing papers based on prior studies. There are many papers still to be written and he is also currently involved in synthesis efforts as part of the current AMAP mercury synthesis. He expects to remain active in research, teaching, consulting and related activities for several years as there are too many good ideas to pursue to stop right now!

On the behalf of the mercury scientific community, the Scientific Steering Committee of the 15th International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant, cordially congratulate Professor Mason for receiving the LAA Award.

Pieter Visscher selected as a GSA 2022 fellow

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

DMS is proud to announce that Prof. Pieter Visscher has been newly elected as a 2022 fellow at the Geological Society of America. The GSA Society Fellowship is an honor bestowed on the best of our profession by election at the spring GSA Council meeting. GSA members are nominated by other GSA members in recognition of a sustained record of distinguished contributions to the geosciences and the Geological Society of America through such avenues as publications, applied research, teaching, administration of geological programs, contributing to the public awareness of geology, leadership of professional organizations, and taking on editorial, bibliographic, and library responsibilities.
Congratulations, Pieter!

This is what nominator Nora Noffke said about Pieter:

"Pieter Visscher has made commendable contributions in carbon biogeochemistry, geomicrobiology, and marine sedimentology. He is active member of GSA for 25 years, and has presented regularly at GSA meetings. More so, Pieter has successfully trained many students and peers"

Ann Bucklin leads new Ocean Decade Action: MetaZooGene

Posted on June 14, 2022June 14, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 (see: https://www.oceandecade.org/) has endorsed and approved a new project led by Ann Bucklin (UConn Marine Sciences) titled, MetaZooGene: Metabarcoding Zooplankton Diversity. The new project builds off an international Working Group of the same name, MetaZooGene (see: https://metazoogene.org/), sponsored by the Scientific Committee for Oceanic Research (SCOR WG157) and chaired by Bucklin. The new project will be attached to the Ocean Decade Program, Marine Life 2030 (see: https://marinelife2030.org/) and will work toward a global vision for integrative molecular – morphological taxonomic analysis of marine zooplankton, with overarching goals to promote and facilitate DNA barcoding and metabarcoding to characterize zooplankton species biodiversity and biogeography in ocean ecosystems.

Former DMS REU student Raul Flamenco on his next career plans

Posted on May 19, 2022May 19, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

Reposted from UConn Today May, 17th

By Elaina Hancock. As a child, Raul Flamenco realized he was a biologist, always eager to share newly absorbed facts with his peers about birds, or lizards, or how cool tentacles are. He soon learned this zeal set him apart, which is something he was already grappling with as a Latinx student growing up in a predominantly white area of the Midwest.

Flamenco started to hide this part of himself to blend in more, which lead him to be unsure of what he wanted to do when he grew up. However, along his path in higher education and now working toward a PhD in Natural Resources, he has learned to embrace his true self and his love of studying nature.

Flamenco is a recent recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and of a member of UConn’s transdisciplinary training program in the Center of Biological Risk Team-TERRA.

He sat down with UConn Today to talk about his journey and his hopes for inspiring others experiencing a lack of representation.

Can you tell us how you rediscovered your love for animals and nature?

For a long time, I had no idea what I wanted to do. For school, I moved back to California, where I’m originally from, and I started taking classes at a community college to not spend an insane amount of money.

I knew I wanted to help people, so I started taking nursing classes, and I had to take a general biology class. I chose marine biology.

On the first day of class, the professor was so animated and passionate, and I kind of saw myself in him because he was Latino, too. It reinvigorated my love for animals, and I realized this is something that I can do, so, I changed my major to biology.

What helped you realize what you wanted to study ecotoxicology?

I was going to study marine biology because I really love invertebrates and I feel like they are underrepresented under undervalued organisms. Then I found out about ecotoxicology, which is the study of toxic chemicals and their impacts on ecosystems. Ecotoxicology is a unique union of different disciplines that benefits people and animals.

Two years before I decided to come to UConn for graduate school, I applied for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) with Penny Vlahos at Avery Point. I was selected, so I came out for 10 weeks and got to work on my own project looking at pesticides and mercury in harbor seal pup tissues to see if there was a relationship between the size of the pups compared with their pesticide or mercury contaminant burden.

What pieces of advice have been most helpful for you, and what do you tell others who may be unsure of what they want to do?

The advice that my mentors gave me was how important it is to choose the right advisor. Your advisor is the person that you are kind of stuck with, and having a good relationship with them is important to make grants or fellowships happen and to ensure that your research aligns with your interests.

I found my advisor, Jess Brandt after she had put out a call for students on Twitter. I reached out and we ended up having an interview that ended up being three and a half hours. It just kind of became a conversation and I thought that was a good indication that we’d get along and that it could be a good working relationship.

I ended up choosing UConn because of my advisor. Also having done the REU two summers prior at Avery Point, I already had an experience of Connecticut, I knew it’s not like the Midwest, it’s not like California, but somewhere in between.

I’m also a big advocate of community colleges. Through community college, I met that professor who was unforgivingly himself and seeing him talk so excitedly about what he was passionate about reminded me of how I get when I’m around the people I’m most comfortable around, I learned to not give that up.

Another difficulty in academia is imposter syndrome, and working through that has added another layer of self-discovery. I remember something that helped me in high school was a when a teacher said, “Fake it ’til you make it,” and I kind of stuck with that. Even if something’s difficult or challenging, I’ll do my best and just get through it. Now that I’m here, I’ve made it and I still feel like I’m faking it even though I’m doing research at this level and I received a prestigious NSF Fellowship sometimes I still feel like what am I really doing? Should I really be here? Based on conversations I’ve had with professors it seems like that never really goes away.

What has your experience been like as a member of Team-TERRA?

It is an interdisciplinary fellowship where we look at the risks to food, energy, water, and ecosystem services. The project is a chance for us to combine our expertise in a way that we wouldn’t normally. Two of us study birds, another studies wetlands, and I study the effects of contaminants.

We’re looking at how climate change can impact the release of contaminants into rivers through combined sewer overflows and other flooding events and how contaminants that get into rivers can then get into fish and shellfish that people are consuming.

We worked on a survey for anglers to figure out when and how much fish they eat, what species they catch. This project links things that I’m passionate about that in my normal research I’m not able to do as concretely — it’s linking contaminants to people.

That’s what interested me about ecotoxicology in the first place, I knew I wanted to help people and in this field I can help people and animals. Team-TERRA helped me bridge that gap.

What’s next?

I want to become a professor to serve as a mentor and role model for future generations of students. I am coming to understand myself better and knowing who I am and not giving in to what other people expect me to be or do. I always saw myself as kind of a chameleon, like I never really belonged anywhere, and I would just change who I was a little bit. That wasn’t so great for discovering my truest self.

Because of a professor just existing and being himself and knowing how few Latinos there are in academia, those are the driving reasons for why I want to become a professor, to become that representation that was important for me to help me get to where I am now.

I determined that getting my Ph.D. was the route that I have to take to get there and here I am.

Antibiotics as a Method to Perturb the Gut Microbiome

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Emma Shipley

Nearly all living organisms have a collection of bacteria that live within or on their body and provide essential functions, such as aiding digestion and neutralizing toxins. An important community of microbes primarily located in the gastrointestinal tract of animals is known as the gut microbiome. Scientists are working to understand the complex interactions between the gut microbiome and both essential body functions and disease. One way to study the benefits of the microbiome is to analyze organisms with reduced or eliminated microbiomes. These organisms are lacking the bacteria that may help them mediate environmental stressors.

Griffin et al. (2021) presents the development of a methodology to perturb the gut microbiome in bivalves using antibiotics. This methodology can be valuable to further research by providing a technique that produces animals with reduced or eliminated gut microbiomes without killing the hosts. The project began with the PhD work of Dr. Melissa Pierce, a previous student in Prof. Ward’s lab. Her work exposed oysters (Crassostrea virginica) to a cocktail of antibiotics for 4 days, but didn’t observe any significant changes in the diversity of gut microbes. Tyler Griffin’s work extended the exposure period to 3 weeks and used the blue mussel (Mytilus edulis), which is a commonly used bivalve for lab experimentation. As this was his first PhD research project, Griffin reflected that learning when to be independent and learning when to ask for help were some of his biggest challenges. He cited the help of Bridget Holohan and former Ward lab postdoc Dr. Lisa Nigro as invaluable.

As shown in the flow chart, bivalves were exposed to antibiotics in individual microcosms, or mason jars, and fed a microalgae stock culture that was sterilized by boiling. Three antibiotics were chosen to inhibit a broad group of bacteria. At the end of the experiment, mussels were dissected and analyzed by a few different methods to determine the effect on the microbiome. Through a chance conversation with and help from Dr. Brittany Sprecher, a previous PhD student in Dr. Senjie Lin’s lab, Griffin chose quantitative polymerase chain reaction, or qPCR, which is a technology used for quantifying genes, to check for the total number of bacteria in the gut. qPCR results showed that mussels exposed to antibiotics had a reduced number of bacteria, and other techniques showed reduced microbial species richness and shifts in the whole community composition. Essentially, the antibiotics had successfully reduced the number and type of the bacteria in the gut microbiome, which supported the hypothesis that prolonged exposure to antibiotics can perturb the gut microbiome of bivalves.

Moving forward, Griffin hopes other researchers can use these methods to study other bivalve species, other microbiomes on different body sites, such as the gill, or even other suspension feeders such as gastropods or ascidians.

Tyler Griffin

Griffin, T. W., Pierce, M. L., Nigro, L. M., Holohan, B. A., & Ward, J. E. (2021). An examination of the use of antibiotics as a method to experimentally perturb the microbiota of suspension-feeding bivalves. Invertebrate Biology, 140( 4), e12352. https://doi.org/10.1111/ivb.12352

Elise Hayes: Longstanding DMS Business Manager

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Emma Shipley

For 30 years, Elise Hayes served as the Department of Marine Sciences Business Manager, called the Marine Sciences Institute at the time of her hiring. She began her time at UConn Avery Point as an undergraduate student, spending breaks working with the National Undersea Research Center and ultimately earning a bachelor’s degree through the UConn Account program. During her tenure, she worked with six department heads/center directors including Richard Cooper, Robert Whitlatch, James O’Donnell, Ann Bucklin, James Edson and Evan Ward.

During her time at UConn, Hayes had the opportunity to participate in many exciting moments. She recalls the opportunity to join a research cruise in the Gulf of Maine and participate in a dive on a 2-person submersible, attending the christening and launch of the RV Connecticut in Maine, and participating in an RV Connecticut cruise to release two pilot whales that were rehabilitated at the Mystic Aquarium as highlights of her time here.

Elise Hayes

As Business Manager, Hayes managed all administrative activities including pre-award and post-award grant management as well as payroll and oversight of purchasing, accounts payable and recharge center activities, among other duties. Her valuable ability to manage the many moving parts of dozens of grants and accounts earned her the gratitude and respect of faculty, staff, and students, and the department will sorely miss her after her retirement at the end of March this year. Post-retirement, she plans to spend more time on her hobby farm where she raises a horse and donkey, goats, and recently acquired some lambs, and spend time at her cottage in Maine.