Marine scientists share discoveries in New Orleans

March 2, 2016 Marine Sciences, Research, Signature and Emerging Areas

University of Maine marine scientists shared their research findings at the 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting last week in New Orleans at the same time a tornado and hail battered the Big Easy, which, on average, is 6 feet below sea level.

Heather Leslie, director of the UMaine Darling Marine Center, said nearly 4,000 participants were expected at the six-day event focused on a range of topics, from zooplankton grazing to sea surface temperature anomalies.

Among the highlights for UMaine, Pete Jumars, recently retired professor of oceanography and former director of the School of Marine Sciences, was honored at a session co-organized by colleague Lee Karp Boss.

In addition, university scientists and friends active in the Gulf of Maine research community gathered informally Monday evening.

“It was fantastic to see so much interest in Gulf of Maine science,” Leslie said. “We have such a vibrant community of scientists and students and this was a great way to celebrate all the work presented at the meeting.”

UMaine faculty and students who gave talks and presented posters at the Feb. 21–26 program included (in alphabetical order):

  • Skylar Bayer, “A Marriage of Larval Modeling and Empirical Data: Linking Adult, Larval and Juvenile Scallops in an Estuary”
  • Emmanuel Boss, Lorraine Remer and the PACE Science team, “Progress report from the PACE science team”
  • Fei Chai, “Future Changes of Nutrient Dynamics and Biological Productivity in California Current System”
  • LeAnn Conlon, “Modeling High Resolution Nearshore Flow Patterns Along the Eastern Coast of Maine”
  • Annette deCharon, J. Theodore Repa, Carla Companion and Lisa Taylor, “Online Course Model that Fosters Interdisciplinary Collaboration Among Graduate Students”
  • Kevin Du Clos, “Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) Measurements of Suspension-Feeding Velocities”
  • Nils Haentjens and Emmanuel Boss, “Estimate chlorophyll and POC concentrations in the Southern Ocean”
  • Heather Leslie, “Sustaining coupled social-ecological marine systems in Mexico’s Gulf of California region”
  • Qianqian Liu, “A Modeling Study of the San Francisco Bay and Delta Ecosystem in High and Low River Flow Years”
  • Noah Oppenheim, “Recruitment Forecasts with Economics in the Gulf of Maine’s American Lobster Fishery”
  • Rachel Lasley-Rasher, “It takes guts to locate elusive crustacean prey”
  • Mary Jane Perry, “Modeling primary productivity in the Margin Ice Zone from glider-based measurements of chlorophyll and light during the 2014 MIZ Program”
  • Alice Ren, “Observations and Biogeochemical Model Results of Dissolved Oxygen off of Central California”
  • Jeremy Rich, “Bacterial succession across seasonal transitions in the coastal waters of the Antarctic Peninsula”
  • Karen Stamieszkin, “Zooplankton grazing effects on particle size spectra under different seasonal conditions”
  • Megan Switzer and Dave Townsend, “Variable proportions of nutrients (N + Si) in the Gulf of Maine: Potential Role of Internal Recycling vs. Advective Inputs”
  • Andrew Thomas, “Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies, Seasonality and Phenology Changes on the NE U.S. and Scotian Shelf”
  • Dave Townsend and Neal Pettigrew, “Alternating Oceanographic States in the Gulf of Maine: Variable Water Mass & Nutrient Fluxes”
  • Rick Wahle, “U.S.-Canada Monitoring Network Reveals Biodiversity Patterns in Data-poor Marine Cobble-Boulder Habitats of the Coastal Northwest Atlantic”
  • Jesica D. Waller, “Linking ocean acidification and warming to the larval development of the American lobster (Homarus americanus)”
  • Gayle Zydlewski, “Fish Behavior, Presence, and Distribution in a Tidally Dynamic Region, with and without a Tidal Energy Device.”

The American Geophysical Union, The Oceanography Society and the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography sponsored the 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting. The next meeting is planned for February 2018 in Portland, Oregon.

The 62,000-member AGU “galvanizes a community of Earth and space scientists that collaboratively advances and communicates science and its power to ensure a sustainable future,” according to its website.