Subunit Meeting 2/11/16, Pauly & Zeller 2016

First thing's first, an announcement.  Brian Gallagher will be stepping down as chapter president so he can devote more time to thesis-writing and graduating.  Good luck Brian!  Stepping up as president is former secretary Emily Liljestrand.  Replacing her is Suzan Shahrestani. You've seen her in several previous posts like our trip to the local STEM Festival and Expo and at the national conference in Portland. Gray Redding will stay on as treasurer.

We spent a little more than the first half of our meeting discussing subunit business.  We have several upcoming conferences including the AFS-Tidewater Annual Meeting in Annapolis MD, and the Larval Fish Conference happening on our own campus in Solomons, MD.  We are excited to be volunteering and possibly fundraising at both of these events.  There're a few more outreach events in the planning stage, a little too early to announce.  Be sure to check back in with us in a month see what springtime demonstrations and festivals we plan to conduct/attend.

But our real reason to meet was to discuss our thoughts about a paper published just last month by Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller of the Sea Around Us group at the University of British Columbia.  It was titled "Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining" and it revealed just that.  The two researchers noted that the statistics organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (henceforth "FAO") neglected to include small scale fisheries like artisanal and sustenance practices, nor illegal or bycatch.  When they reevaluated the last 60 years of global catch with this additional data in mind, they found an alarmingly different historical trajectory.  Overall, the "reconstructed" catches, made with these other fisheries in mind, were 53% higher than the actual reported data.  They further separated the global catch by geographic region and type of fishery to illustrate where the most overfishing and uncertainty may lie.

Gray praised the paper for it's clear style and straightforward message.  Oftentimes, our discoveries can be clouded by jargon and bogged down in statistics.  But it's no surprise that an article found in a journal called "Nature Communications" would present its findings colloquially.  Though Mike pointed out that for a paper aimed (or at least well-understood) by non-scientists, is was surprisingly devoid of "doom and gloom."  Usually to ignite concern for the current state of fisheries, reports get a bit "hand wavy" (also a direct quote from our meeting).  If you have thoughts, please leave a comment. Is there a fundamental trade-off between optimism and impact?

When we got into the meat and potatoes of the paper, the conversation turned to data, specifically if we agreed with the methods and results.  Hillary pointed out that "poor quality" data was weighted according to it's trustworthiness, so the overall sum would be biased towards information we were more sure on.  Brian speculated if this might have been done better if they weighted measurements by the amount of resources that went into collecting it, as a de-facto measure of quality and reliability.  When we started speculating on, and considering the dependability of data based on fishery type, but agreed that fisheries data is rife with error, even when it is collected by NOAA.  It's no wonder when some of the sought after data is intentionally obscured or falsified. Suzan was reminded of another project by Daniel Pauly and his Post-Doc researcher Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak that used google satellite imaging to find illegal fishing traps in the Persian Gulf.  We concluded that this was pretty and made for some surprisingly lovely images:

Credit: Google Earth by way of www.livescience.com

We ended our discussion of Pauly & Zeller 2016 by thinking about what we could learn from this paper, and what implementation we would promote or consider in our future fisheries endeavors, even if we ourselves would not pursue these avenues of study.  Clearly, as a whole, we need to prioritize collecting data in small countries. Like voting, those seemingly insignificant contributions to the global catch can begin to add up and ultimately make a huge difference. But the UN doesn't have the clout nor incentive to calculate exact numbers. Some studies take time. When it takes too much time, things get put in academic limbo.  And often, as noted by our resident expert and Research Assistant Scientist Barbara Hutniczak who has worked with this FAO data, when there is no requirement to report data, more often than not people won't.  So we put it again to our few readers: How do we get a full assessment of global catch? How specifically do we collect data on illegal catch? Will we need to travel to every single Polynesian island to record their sustenance catches, or will a subsample be sufficient? And my own personal question that we never got around to, for the sake of time: What obligation do we have to manage different geographical and purposed fisheries?

We'll continue to think about these and other issues in the next month.  And when we reconvene, we'll still be looking at the South Pacific, but how we can use shark tooth weaponry to reconstruct historical predator diversity.

Thanks for checking in on us!

Return to the Mothership: Our Students Visit the AFS HQ Open House

What do you usually picture when you think of the office holiday party?  Personally, I think of the syndicated 2005-2013 TV program "The Office," but I figure that's about 90% because of the show's title.

Typically you take the conference room, move out the tables and chairs, throw up some tinsel, a Christmas tree, and a menorah, bada bing bada boom, holiday party. There's a few drinks, some present exchanging, everyone out by 5:00.

But it seems like the American Fisheries Society is a bit different.  Not the conference room, tinsel, tree, etc., but in who they choose to bring to their holiday party.  Instead of restricting the guest list to the employees and their families, all members of AFS were welcome to this open house.  And as a local student chapter, we jumped at the opportunity to attend.

Credit: American Fisheries Society (http://tinyurl.com/jjgly9g)

We arrived at 3:50, twenty minutes fashionably late to the event.  Due to some new construction on the property- an area also occupied by the Society of American Foresters, the Wildlife Society, The American Society for Remote Sensing, and the US Composting Council- we drove though the parking lot equivalent to a hedge maze before locating the exact place, a sleek building with modern features. On the first floor, we hung up our jackets and found our pristinely- displayed name tags. We signed the annual holiday card

The eyes are nightmare-fuel. But the snowman-innards are so cute!

With plenty of food, drinks, and dessert, we had a blast socializing with AFS headquarters employees, from the I.T. department to book and magazine editors.  We also marveled at the office decorations- exactly the thing you might imagine when picturing holiday party meets fisheries professionals, including an extensive and impressive collection of posters from several years of national meetings:

So from meeting new and interesting people to reconnecting with our "sister" subunit across the bay at University of Maryland Eastern Shore, we had a blast! Thanks again to the AFS for opening their doors to us and welcoming members to their event.  And to all our other readers, have your own happy holidays and a great new year.

Emily (Secretary) and Brian (President). Credit: AFS (http://tinyurl.com/jjgly9g)

UMES Sister Subunit. Credit: AFS (http://tinyurl.com/jjgly9g)

Oysters with Barnacles, Turtles with Backpacks. Our turn at the St. Mary's County STEM Festival & Expo

On November 14, three of our members, Suzan Shahrestani, Aimee Hoover, and Emily Liljestrand, all attended the St. Mary's County STEM Festival and Expo.  Here, students from public schools around the county came out to enjoy demonstrations, interactive games, and dozens of local and state scientific resources.  Naturally, as a local marine science institute, the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and its graduate students were more than happy to help out.  We had a running video of Ms. Hoover's experiments on the best method to tag and track baby sea turtles (the titular "turtle backpacks"), an oyster shell under a dissection microscope to show all the organisms that need this hard surface to grow, and a collection of multicolored beads to demonstrate how sampling works.  And of course, we provided fish puzzles to teach identification/classification and handed out CBL stickers to any interested youngsters.  Check out some photos of our booth and the event as a whole:

Our trifold board with information relevant to the demonstrations

Suzan setting up her laptop to show underwater images of jellyfish and fish.

And of course, our adoring public:

And a few of the other attractions (AKA, the competition):

We were happy to be invited! We look forward to helping out again next year.

The One Where We go to the MEES Colloquium

Once a year, in the autumn, like the falling of the leaves or the contracting of the days, something occurs like clockwork.  The students of the Marine Estuarine and Environmental Sciences (MEES) graduate program at the University of Maryland meet at one of the several campuses to discuss outreach, communication skills, and just, shall we say "socialize" with the other students and faculty.  Last year we had the privileged to host this ourselves.  So for many this was either our first MEES colloquium, or at least the first one where we weren't running around like chickens with no heads.  All in all, the 1.5 day meeting was engaging, informative, and entertaining.

See below for our summary of the event.  I'll just say now, there's an astronaut involved. Get psyched.

Friday October 30, 2015, 9:00AM SHARP
We all take off towards Annapolis in our respective vehicles.  Those of us in Solomons who were planning to spend the night at the conference hotel all caravaned in one of our campus vehicles.

Friday October 30, 2015, 10:30ish

We arrived at the Crowne Plaza Annapolis and picked up our registration packets and name badges.  The MEES office was selling some sweet t-shirts as well!

 

Friday October 30, 2015, 11:00AM
We had our annual MEES student meeting, led by CBL PhD student Jenna Luek where we brainstormed about ways we can network professionally and socially as a MEES student group.  Suggestions included an alumni networking event on the professional side and "MEES Olympics" and/or a pirate cruise for the social aspect.

Friday October 30, 2015, All Afternoon
After a delicious lunch, the Friday afternoon session included updates on the new MEES curriculum and UMCES accreditation, as well as some professional development from the great folks at the Integrative Application Network (IAN).  We got to try our hand at make useful diagrams for presentations and publications, and we also go to practice creating "and/but/therefore" statements, some of which were submitted to our event Facebook page, to convey our research to the public.  Overall, it was a really informative and useful afternoon!

Friday October 30, 2015, Poster Session

After the afternoon session at the hotel, we headed to the historic Banneker-Douglass Museum in downtown Annapolis for our evening activities.  We started with a great poster session of 3rd-year MEES students (CBL students Grey Redding and Aimee Hoover shown below).

Friday October 30, 2015, Astronaut Talk

The highlight of the night was an amazing talk by MEES alumnus Ricky Arnold.  Ricky did his masters in the MEES program studying submerged aquatic vegetation in the Chesapeake Bay and after he graduated he joined NASA as an astronaut.  Ricky was a member of shuttle mission in 2009 which delivered a final pair of power-generating solar array wings and truss elements to the International Space Station.  Ricky dazzled us with photos of his space mission and gave us a fantastic view of Earth from space.  CBL students Kevin Kahover and Hillary Glandon were pretty excited to meet such an awesome celebrity!

 

Saturday October 31, 2015, Morning

After an evening of touring the local alcohol dispensing establishments, getting to see many of the residents dressed befitting the Halloween-eve night, we arose the next day for breakfast and presentations from graduate students in four areas of study.  Four MEES PhD students gave presentations on their graduate research, ranging from nutrient removal after farming on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to copepod deaths in the Chesapeake Bay, to sponge symbioses in the Caribbean.  Our own Hillary Glandon (shown below presenting in a Halloween and science appropriate crab hat!) won first place for her work on the effects of temperature and acidification on blue crab in the Chesapeake bay. That's not all. Our own Jenna Leuk also walked home tied four ways for first place in the poster competition.  Bravo to them both!

We look forward to taking back to our home institutes all the information we learned at this educational colloquium.  We'll consider putting our research into a coherent, narrative form when explaining it to fellow scientists and laymen alike.  We'll consider using the IVN's extensive image library and resources when designing posters and presentations.  But above all, we look forward to organizing events with our fellow MEES students, who we know all the better because we had this event.

Southern Maryland Oyster Festival

Seems like it was only a week ago we were reporting on our outreach activities at the Maryland Crab Festival (though really it was, like, half a year ago and that is posted here). But it wouldn't be Southern Maryland if there wasn't some festival or another every single weekend.  We have wine fests, boat fests, art fests, you name it. So inevitably an event came around that fit our interests as Fisheries scientists.  It would have been very easy to miss us, tucked away in the relative "boondocks" of the fairgrounds but we represented Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and our AFS Student Subunit proudly at the Maryland Oyster Festival in Leonardtown, MD, this last weekend October 17-18.

Despite the cold, we had a approximately 4,000 people visit our little booth!  In fact there were visitors from all over the country (mostly to participate in or watch the National Oyster Shucking Competition), but we were able to tempt over a few scientifically-inclined souls to marvel at our oyster demonstration and interactive watershed model.

Awwwww yeah.  Watershed model.

Oysters serve an important economic and ecological role in the Chesapeake.  We demonstrated the latter with a tank filled with juvenile oysters, growing on old discarded shells.  Throughout the day, the algae we provided which initially clouded the tank was consumed by these oysters, clearing out the water above.  In the environment, the same thing happens- Oysters help keep down harmful out-of-control "blooms," and make sure light can penetrate the water to plants and microbes below.

Nope, not an interested child.  Just our president, Brian Gallagher. But look at how comparatively clear that water is.

However, Oysters are also delicious. We've been harvesting them from the bay since the area was initially settled. This has been so thorough that today the biomass (total kg of oysters) is only 1% of what it was before we started fishing them. We were glad to talk about this and other local environmental issues to the thousands who stopped by our booth.

This event is hosted and sponsored by The Rotary Club of Lexington Park and this was the 50th anniversary. See below for some pictures of the booth and our members interacting with the public.