From ancient polynesians to seafaring sailors, tattoos in their various fashions have adorned the derma canvas for centuries. Used to represent tribal ranks, voyages to distant lands and conquests, or even bad decisions made last Saturday night, the artful body pieces have portrayed some pretty illustrious narratives. Lately, however, a new take on the popular art form has begun to take hold.

Cue Nemo walking into the tattoo parlor.

Yes. You heard me right.

Fish getting inked.

Understandably, you may be thinking…Why on earth would our fishy friends need to get all tatted up?!?! And as per most things in life I defer to my usual answer… FOR SCIENCE!  

In labs across the globe, study organism tattooing is quickly becoming all the rage.  The “tattoos”, a Visible Implant Elastomer (VIE), are employed when critters can’t be marked or tagged utilizing the more popular methods of identification because they are either too small or their bodies are incompatible with normal tags.

In the early 90’s,  Northwest Marine Technology began to develop the VIE tagging system to allow researchers to discretely mark everything from fish, crustacea, amphibians, reptiles, and the occasional unruly undergrad. Most often the “tattoos” are simple dots or lines (unless you are real good with a hypodermic needle) and they are available in ten fabulous colors, including NEON!!!

The tattoo Nemo is sporting above is a bio-compatible, two-part liquid elastomer that is injected right beneath the first layer of transparent tissue. After a couple of hours, the material cures into a pliable, but solid material and Nemo is ready to rock the seven seas. The best thing about the VIE tattoos, is that they are less invasive then traditional methods of tagging and have minimal impact on the growth and behavior of the organism. Fabulous and good for the animals.

For certain epic organisms, who can’t be tamed or tagged like our slippery cephalopod friends, the VIE tattoos are one of the few ways scientists are able to gather field data to better understand these species.

Perhaps Carl will consider these for his next rendition of Science Ink.

Special thanks to the ‘tattoo artists’ of the Dixon Lab for inspiring this article and providing pictures of their work. Check out the amazing science they are doing utilizing these methods: www.dixonlab.com

The post Inked. first appeared on Deep Sea News.

My colleague Rafael de la Parra is the executive director of Ch’ooj Ajauil (Mayan for “Blue Realm”), a long time research partner of Georgia Aquarium and an excellent naturalist; he knows more about whale sharks in this area than anyone, and he’s a dab hand with marine mammals and other pelagic (in the water column, i.e. not on the bottom) species as well.  We headed out on Rafa’s boat, Grampus, for a day of whale shark photo identification in the waters east of Isla Contoy, an insular national park about 20 miles north-north-east of Cancun.  The wind and waves were against us and I didn’t have high hopes; indeed, the Harbor Master only opened the harbor for small boat activity at the last minute.  It was a predictably long and sloppy ride to the area of interest, but along the way I was encouraged to see some turtles (las tortugas), a curious group of spotted dolphins (delfin) and an abundance of flying fish (pez volador).  Eventually we reached a small flotilla of ecotourism boats, which gather as predictably around whale sharks as the frigate birds do above schools of baitfish.

Despite the conditions it turned out to be a truly magical day!  The whale sharks, perhaps 70-100 of them, were clustered especially tightly and it was not unusual to put your mask under the water and be able to see three or four simultaneously.  In fact, it makes it hard to get good photo ID images, because they are just coming too thick and fast, which I guess is a good problem to have on any day!

The ecotour boats gradually petered away until we were left alone to snorkel with the animals in the vast expanse of the offshore waters of the warm clear Caribbean.  I love it when it’s like that, because without distractions for us or the animals, behaviours are more normal and your eyes gradually open to all the other things that are going on around you.  And that’s when you realise that this patch of ocean, seemingly empty except for, you know, 100 whale sharks (!), is in fact replete with life.

Most obvious among the whale sharks were a number of manta rays.  These graceful pelagic animals are filter feeders just like the whale sharks so it’s no surprise that they often show up together.  I was lucky enough to experience several encounters with the same ray over the course of the day: a male missing one of his cephalic lobes, which are normally used for steering (like canards on aircraft) and to direct food into their capacious mouths.  Each time he found a dense patch of food (in this case almost certainly tuna eggs), he would barrel roll over and over, seemingly oblivious to his new dance partner floating enraptured above.

In between whale sharks, which are almost exclusively feeding at the very surface, it pays to look down deeper, perhaps 40-50ft.  Down there can be seen other graceful residents of the pelagic zone.  Mustard-coloured cownosed rays form large schools, gliding so slowly that they appear to hang suspended in the water.  Swifter are the mobulas or devil rays, which look like miniature manta rays and fly in formations of black white and grey against the cobalt blue of the deeper water.

Fish are there too.  I was buzzed by half a dozen small mahi mahi, which passed by so quickly that I barely had time to snap a picture as they passed.  Other fish hitch their wagon to the bigger animals; every whale shark is accompanied by a plethora of remoras, big and small, hitching a ride on the fins, riding alongside, or even swimming in and out of the mouth and gills.  Rainbow runner and small schools of sardines draft along behind or below their giant spotty compadres.

I even picked up my own hangers on: a pair of baby jacks that acted as pilot fish, riding the bow wave in front of my mask as I kicked hard to keep up with the sharks and rays, and getting in the way of my photographic efforts!

On the ride back to port (now thankfully with a gentler, following sea), I chatted with the others in our group about the feelings you get from these sorts of experiences and we concluded that you can’t really know unless you see it for yourself.  The two biggest things for me are first, the sense that the seemingly empty ocean really isn’t, that even in the absence of bottom features or structure of any kind, the pelagic zone is alive with diversity large and small, and second that this is a truly alien world here on earth.  We can intrude from the edges, for a brief period, and admire the grace and adaptive successes of the animals that live here, but this is not our world, not really, except in so far as we are stewards of the sea.  That feeling of having a window into another world must be a glimmer of how astronauts felt the first time they set foot on the moon.  It’s comforting to know that there are still amazing biological phenomena to see here on earth, in the oceans, if we just take the time, make an effort and peel back a corner of the curtain to peek into the fantastic world of the pelagic zone.

The post TGIF – Magical Quintana Roo first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Sci Starter is a directory of citizen science projects around the world – scientists are looking for data, and they’re asking everyone to help out. Some projects require you to buckle up your bootstraps and head out into the field, while other projects (my kind of research) let you curl up with your coffee and laptop.

Digital Fishers is one such project that lets you do science from the comfort of your desk – computer algorithms can’t analyze video footage very accurately, so researchers employ citizen scientists to watch 15-second clips and answer basic questionnaires.

So what are you waiting for? Turn off Angry Birds and start doing science!

The post TGIF: Procrastinate, watch deep-sea videos, help science! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post California Coastal Climate Change Research first appeared on Deep Sea News.

ARRRRR ME HEARTIES!!!! So ye want t’ be a pirate, t’ sail the open sea searching for booty – what? You said a marine biologist? Oh. Well, sailing the open sea searching for booty is actually prohibited by UNOLS regulations – what? Oh, you wanted advice on how to BECOME a marine biologist. All right then. Fall must be the time when a
student’s heart turns toward the call of the sea, for I have received several requests for advice from undergraduate students.

And let me just get this out of the way – being a marine biologist is not about pulling golf balls out of whale blowholes or hugging dolphins. If you want to do that, become a wildlife veterinarian or a dolphin trainer. Marine biology is about figuring out the way the ocean works – and most of the ocean is not made out of dolphins. (That is too horrible a scenario to contemplate).

There are bad reasons and good reasons to become a marine biologist. Fortunately Dr. Milton Love has a convenient list which you should go read immediately. Go there now. Still want to be a marine biologist? Did you read the part about the smell? Ok, you’re sure? Keep on reading this blog post, then.

The following advice is aimed at undergraduates, and is my personal opinion and should by no means be taken as the One True Way. I invite our marine biological readers (both academic and non-academic) to add their own suggestions in the comments.

GET YOUR ACADEMIC SCIENCE ON

You have to have a solid, traditional science background to be a marine biologist. This means the standard coursework in biology, chemistry, physics, math, and statistics. If you want to take environmental studies-interdisciplinary-type courses, go ahead, but it won’t do you any good without the basics. The easiest way to do this is to major in a hard science, but it is possible to major in something else so long as you do this coursework. You don’t have to love all of it – please don’t ask me about my grade in Organic Chemistry – but you have to do most of it reasonably well. I strongly recommend computer programming as well – scientists today live in a glorious sea of data, and you are going to have to know how to program in order to avoid drowning in it. (I spent a year and a half weeping into my R code – don’t be like me!).

Assuming you want to be a marine BIOLOGIST, take lots of biology! Ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, microbiology, cell biology, invertebrate zoology…even if the course is not directly about marine science, you will be learning skills that can answer questions about the ocean. If you don’t like advanced biology courses, well, you probably won’t like marine biology.

FIND A WAY TO GET RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

So, marine biology is about learning how the amazing animals and ecosystems of the ocean work, but how exactly do we do that? RESEARCH! Classwork will give you the basics, but working in a lab or doing independent research is how you’re going to learn how science is actually done. It is easiest to start as an undergraduate, since there are lots of opportunities and resources out there to help you. (More on non-undergraduate opportunities later).

You might notice that many of the things on this list involve talking to your professors. Getting to know them is one of the best investments you can make, though I know it’s not easy, especially at large universities. But science professors (along with teaching) are also running a lab, doing research, talking with other scientists who are doing research, and have graduate students in need of help with their own research – so getting to know them is one of the best ways of getting your foot in the door. Also, you’re going to need recommendation letters for most of the below list of programs, and it’s pretty hard for a professor to write a letter for a student they’ve never spoken to. So go to office hours and talk to them – the best time is at the beginning of the semester when things are pretty quiet.

Here’s a list to get you started:

• Work in a lab. I got started in marine ecology when some weird guy I knew from student theater said that his lab was hiring undergrad assistants. I needed a job, and that sounded fun. Well, scanning several thousand slides (this was before digital cameras) was not exactly fun per se…but it got me involved in the life of the lab. I met the graduate students, went to lab meeting, and started to learn how this whole science thing worked. Many labs hire undergraduate research assistants, and it is a great way to learn about science while gaining some useful skills. So go to your professors’ office hours and ask if there are any opportunities in their labs, or if they know of any in their departments.

• Take a research semester abroad. There are many programs that allow you to go abroad, get course credit, and do science.  They may cost more money than your usual tuition, but may also have financial aid programs. The two programs I know of off the top of my head are Sea Education Association (sail on a tall ship, learn oceanography and maritime skills) and Three Seas Program (coastal marine science in New England, the Caribbean, and southern California). Both of these program have a strong academic component (e.g., you’ll do coursework in marine science) and emphasize independent research skills. No doubt there are more of these programs – if you have experience with one, please add it in the comments. [Update: Another program mentioned in the comments: the Williams College/Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program.] [Update II: Also CSU Marine Biology Semester at USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies].

• Do independent research. The core of being a marine biologist is, of course, research. One of the best ways to get research experience is through the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. These are usually summer programs (though some are at different times of year) that set you up with a lab and and a mentor, and pay you a reasonable stipend (enough to satisfy most work-study requirements) to do research. You can search on their website for programs you might be interested in – here is the list of Ocean Sciences REUs. (I did two REUs as an undergraduate and they were both amazing experiences.) Another great resource is Pathways to Science, which focuses particularly on connecting underrepresented groups with mentors and opportunities. Your university may also have programs just for its own students – investigate by asking your professors and with the appropriate Student Affairs office. [Update: the MBARI Summer Internship.]

YOU’VE GRADUATED – NOW WHAT?

Once you are no longer a student, the path becomes more twisty and difficult, and some of the unfairness of the academic system kicks in. Here are your options:

• Go directly to graduate school, do not pass go, and definitely do not collect $200. If you’ve majored in a hard science and gotten some independent research experience, you have the option of going directly to graduate school. (How to do that is a topic for another post.) While many excellent scientists have gone straight through, my personal recommendation is to take a year or three and getting some work experience. Enjoy not having homework and going out with your friends during the week. Being a bit older and more mature will help your sanity later on.

• Get a job in academic science. Many labs have research assistants – people who are paid to help in the field or in the lab. These jobs can be an amazing way to get experience, to meet people in your field, and to go awesome places. Unfortunately, they are usually funded off grants, which makes them ephemeral and badly paid. Some only pay room and board, particularly those in exotic locations. If you don’t have student loans and can stay on your parents’ health insurance (and you are a traditional student in your early 20s) – these can be a great option for grand science adventures. If you have student loans and/or are not on your parents’ health insurance and/or cannot just pick up and go to crazy locations, these may be very difficult for you to do. The best resource for finding these type of jobs that I know of is the ECOLOG-L listserv. Other paid options that people I know have done include working as fisheries observers or as educators at aquariums.

• Get a job that is not in academic science, but will give you useful experience anyway. When I graduated from college, I had to take a job that would not only pay me, but give me health insurance. While I found it frustrating at the time, it actually led to unexpected paths that have proved very valuable – for example, the construction job that taught me about managing a large project (and about rebar! I love rebar!). When I was interviewing for graduate school, my construction job made me stand out from the crowd. Just be prepared to explain how your nonstandard experiences will help you be successful in marine biology. However, this works best if you also have a strong science background from undergrad.

• Get a nonscience job and volunteer with scientists. Many labs and research expeditions take volunteers along. If you have a regular job but want to get into science, volunteering can be a great way to get your foot in the door. This works best if you have some time available during regular work hours, but some people take volunteers at night or on the weekends. If you have a really flexible schedule, it is possible to volunteer to work on an oceanographic vessel for the duration of a cruise (which can be anywhere from a few days to several weeks). The best way to find volunteer positions is to email people who you might be interested in working with – even if they are not accepting volunteers, they may know someone who is.

IN SUMMARY

To paraphrase Michael Pollan: “Basic science. Lots and lots. Mostly research.”

MORE RESOURCES

• Dr M’s excellent post So You Want to Be A Deep-Sea Biologist. [edit: added this link 13 Nov 21:00 PST]
• Danna Staaf on How to Become a Cephalopodiatrist. She focuses on cephalopods, but most of her advice holds true for all fields of marine biology. [link added 15 Nov 0800 PST]
• The indispensable Dr. Milton Love’s So You Want To Be A Marine Biologist and So You Want To Be A Marine Biologist: The Revenge
• Becoming A Marine Biologist from SUNY Stonybrook – also in Chinese! (PDF)
• Advice from former Scripps graduate student Greg Szulgit.
• Huge list of resources from Hopkins Marine Lab
• Christie Wilcox (now of Science Sushi) tells her story

The post So You Want to Be A Marine Biologist: Deep Sea News Edition first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Today, Scott Olson published an editorial at TCPalm, a local news site for Palm Beach area on some very deep misgivings that all of us in deep-sea biologist have regarding the state of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and its assets – the Johnson Sea Link submersibles. It was a poignant and accurate assessment from the heart of a man who spent 14 years as part of the submersible and robotics team. This hits particularly heavy given the closing down of the Space Shuttle program, but an equally disastrous yet barely sung development is that at the end of the month all remaining submersible personnel will be laid off permanently.

40 years, 9000 dives and 2 submersibles thrown down the drain. Regardless if you are from MBARI, WHOI, University of Washington or any other submersible research competitor there is no doubt that this long and prestigious career should not have passed away so unceremoniously. The Sea Links have been featured in numerous documentaries on National Geographic, Discover, PBS, local stations around the Gulf and Atlantic. Innumerable discoveries in the deep-sea have made using thee versatile machines and highly-skilled crew.

I had the pleasure of going down and using them in research at Gulf Mexico seeps between 500-700 meters depth where I witnessed first hand in a wide frame (thanks to the acrylic sphere) the magnitude of the huge expanse of giant tubeworm gardens. But my history with these machines is but a mere speck on the illustrious careers they have inspired and started. It was just over 2 years ago, in May 2009, that I wrote about my dismay with falling apart of HBOI and their vessels and subs. This set off a storm of posts and comments here on Deep Sea News with much support from the community.

More recently, the Sea Link was pivotal in helping researchers access the deep-sea to understand effects the Deepwater Horizon oil spill might have on the important coral communities, in addition to giving journalists a first hand look at the disaster so that they could relay this to the public. (Over 10,000 hits exist for “Johnson Sea Link” + “oil spill”.) What a disservice we are doing to our country by not maintaining a fleet of deep submergence vehicles close to our borders which can rapidly respond to crises such as oil spills! With so few manned submersibles operating out of the USA, and each being used for research purposes all over the world, we kicked the proverbial pony on ourselves here.

The subs and the vessels and the HBOI are clearly needed for advancement in ocean sciences, but Scott hits on a very real point:

The reasons for the demise of such a successful program are convoluted, but in my opinion they all point back to a lack of visionary leadership at multiple levels, including at the institute and in state and federal governments. In my opinion, the endowment bequeathed to the institute upon the deaths of its co-founders in the 1980s was severely mismanaged and the subsequent FAU managers did not appreciate the value of the program.

Most of the blame, however, lies with the shortsightedness of the U.S. public and the counterproductive infighting at the program-bloated sources of federal funding; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation.

There  is plenty of blame to go around. But if we dumping millions of dollars of oceanographic equipment in foreign lands and shutting down an American icon such as the space shuttle program, what are our priorities? A commenter on Olson’s article, who goes by clearstory, suggests:

“The US is walking away from more than technical and scientific leadership . It’s getting to the point we don’t manufacture anything other than weapons.”

Politics will always be a barrier to progress, but when we lose our icons of exploration and research – the ship, the sub, the shuttle – what will symbolize the pride we feel in American innovation and scientific leadership? As Olson says, some of the blame lies in the shortsightedness of the US public. But how they appreciate what they don’t know exists.

Lets look to ourselves, the marine science community, to place some of that blame on. We have failed to capture the American imagination of at-sea exploration, discovery and scientific research. We tried to do this with the “WOW” factor: new species! WOW! big squids! WOW! strange fish! WOW! But I think people want more than that. They want to know why we are down there, what we hope to accomplish and how this affects them. We’ve underestimated the intelligence of that unknown quantity we called “the public” and I think, frankly, they are bored.

Hell, I’m bored. I was bored with my research in grad school cause it wasn’t relevant to people. My advisor asked me to prepare a response for “why should the American public fund you research?” Every time I caught myself saying bullshit statements like: to advance basic understanding of… *yawn*, because we need to understand species distributions because …. *yawn*, we’ve found so many important and potentially life-saving medical compounds from deep-sea animals…. well, ok that one is pretty damn useful but not at all what I do. Why should the “average American”, i.e. my parents, fund my work? They shouldn’t. Unless finding new things and going new places excites them.

NASA has done a pretty solid job of capitalizing on the human spirit, American patriotism and sense of awe and pride in the past with manned space exploration, astronauts and the shuttles. Marine science on the other hand, has not. How often are marine biologists on The Today Show, for instance. Does the public appreciate the dedication and training of oceanographers, sub and ship crew in the same way as astronauts, mission control and NASA engineers? I don’t think so. And now, we silently have blood on our hands. Not the first ax to fall, but a heavy one.

The solution is simple. Give a damn. Give a damn like you never gave a damn in your life! Show off you passion for the ocean at every available opportunity. Make it a lifestyle choice. Make as much noise for the ocean as you can! SHOW people what you do.

YOUR SCIENCE IS NOTHING WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF PEOPLE.

Never forget it either. At the end of Seuss’ The Lorax, the Onceler comes to the realization, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” If marine scientists don’t seem care, or at the very least appear to care, why should anyone else? I know we care! So lets show it to everyone! Write your local papers, indy mags, popular science mags. Tell you press officers everything you do. Make a big deal for the ocean! We can’t afford to throw away any more tools.

The post The Ship, The Sub, The Shuttle – We Should Blame Ourselves first appeared on Deep Sea News.

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The post New Website first appeared on Deep Sea News.

1. Love and Pain…Like Sunshine and Rain. Welcome to Deep-Sea Science.  Before you start, you better realize what exactly you are heading into.  Deep-sea science can be both extremely rewarding and extremely heart breaking.  To be a deep-sea scientist is to be one part scientist, one part explorer, and three parts masochist. The logistical difficulties and financial requirements of sampling an environment covered with miles of water will pretty much make every project you want to do either impossible or close to it.  While other graduates students and scientists in your department drive a truck down to their field site and take samples till the cows come home, you will be having a nervous breakdown because of insufficient data.  A project that takes other scientists a weekend and $250 to do will take you three years and $250,000. So, deep-sea science is not for the faint of heart.  However, if you can manage to get a chance (which likely will not happen), then you will probably discover something new, a species, a habitat, a process, or a biological adaptation. Deep-sea science is a young field compared to many other science disciplines.  You will never be at a loss for questions, because most of the answers are still unknown.  Too bad you won’t be able address all of them.  I write this with tongue-in-cheek of course, but I am serious.  This is a tough field and doing deep-sea science isn’t easy.  Think about this for some time before you move to number 2.
2. You Won’t Be Jacques Cousteau. Are you still here?  Well, now you better realize a few other things.  You are not going to be rich or famous.  You will not ride on Zodiacs chasing after charismatic megafauna.  You are not likely to spend every day riding around in a sub wearing a red stocking hat.  One week per year, one month if you are lucky, you will spend at sea.  How that time will fly by!  You will spend the rest of the year analyzing that material.  You will spend most of the remaining year writing.  Writing proposals, grants, papers, emails, etc. I hope you like to write. When you are not writing you will be doing menial and repetitive tasks.  Entering numbers into Excel, counting snails, programming, picking absurdly small organisms out of mud, mixing chemicals, these are the tasks that will fill your day.  You will also be spending a lot of time on a computer.  Not Facebooking, Ichatting, surfing the web for fun, playing the newest game.  O’ no my friend, your computer will be the vessel of menial tasks. Thankfully, those menial tasks may actually produce some sort of scientific product (but see Number One).
3. Proving Yourself, Again, Again, and Again. From the time you make your first contact with a potential advisor to the time you are full professor, you will have to prove yourself again and again.  Publishing papers, obtaining grant money, getting positions, getting tenure, etc will all require an exhaustive and thorough review process of everything you’ve done.  If this doesn’t sound like fun then you should reconsider now.
4. I Took Underwater Basket Weaving, What Other Classes Will I Need? Before you even think about graduate school you need to think about the classes you had as an undergrad.  Hopefully you have had multiple basic biology courses (ecology, physiology, evolution, genetics, microbiology) and paired that with some basic level physics, chemistry, and geology.  You don’t necessarily need an undergraduate degree in Marine Biology.  My own degree is in basic biology. Invertebrate Zoology will be a must and you better get an A in it (or ichthyology if you prefer the verts).  The deep sea and all of its weird creatures will challenge everything you learn.  Don’t start off behind.  I would require any potential graduate student to have a firm grasp of math and statistics (Calculus 1, Linear Algebra, and Basic Stats at least).  Modern science is increasing more quantitative.  Now we move to advanced modeling and analytical methods.  You can start learning them now or later.  Not required, although important, would be a basic logic course.  Good science is good logic.  Getting the basics can only help.  You should also make sure you can write well or at least sufficiently (see Number 2). Some basic understanding of mechanics and engineering would be plus as you deal with temperamental oceanographic equipment.
5. Your Training Begins Now and You Are Already Behind. If you have made it to this point, then you are still behind.  You will need to start brushing up on everything deep sea.  Obviously, DSN is a good first step.  Pick a copy of Silent Deep, Deep-Sea Biology, or The Ecology of Hydrothermal Vents.  Better yet pick up all three and read them all.  When you start emailing people about graduate positions you don’t want to sound like an idiot.  Hopefully these books will give you some idea of exactly which subject you would like to research. Yes, you have to be more specific than “deep-sea biology”. If you find all this reading (that in the next step) burdensome or boring then consider another field.  You need to be passionate about the subject (see Numbers 1-3) so you should want to do this.  In fact, reading about the deep sea should be your idea of great way to spend an evening or weekend. You should feel like this is the greatest thing since sliced white bread.  If not, … well, this is not for you.
6. Meet Google Scholar, Your Brand New Friend For the Next Several Months Now with all that basic level deep-sea knowledge comes the advanced stuff.  Use Google Scholar to search for primary literature on deep-sea topics.  You are looking to do a few things. 1) You want to know about all the new advances in deep-sea science (DSN can help you). 2) You want to know who are the movers and shakers in the field, both the legends and the new an upcoming movers and shakers. 3) You are looking for specific topics in deep-sea science that interest you.  Some deep-sea publications can be had online without subscriptions or library access.  There will be several you cannot get.  Don’t fret! Search for the first author’s website to see if they have posted the pdf on their lab’s website.  If not, don’t hesitate to email the first author or corresponding author (sometimes different) for a pdf.
7. You Can Study Anything You Want, You Just Better Know What It Is. As you begin looking for potential Ph.D. advisors, you will definitely be asked what specifically you want to research.  You better have an answer.  You will probably want to pick a focal organisms or entire group (mine’s gastropods, KZ’s is anemones and vent critters, Peter’s is coral).  The most successful programs come from people having a focal taxon that provides the framework to address larger questions.  However, this not the complete story.  You need to have a specific question or topic.  Don’t worry there is no wrong answer here.  Scientists in the field just want to see you have put more thought in this than “deep-sea squid are totally sweet, and I need to work with them.”  A good example would be “The factors determining the geographic distributions of species X” or “the evolution of Y’s adaptations to the deep”. After you state the topic you are interested in, be prepared to answer why. Numbers 4 and 5 will help you narrow your ideas and present new ones.  Most papers and the books above will leave off with questions that are outstanding in the field.
8. Ivy League, Great Surfing, Party School? It Doesn’t Matter! One of the biggest mistakes people usually make when applying for grad school is choosing the institution instead of the person they want to work with.  Sure the Ivy League is nice and the name recognition will help a little or living near the beach would be totally sweet, but ultimately they are not that important.  Your success will be measured by your own research and the products from that (i.e. publications).  Instrumental to this is picking a laboratory and an advisor who will provide both the research topic and the support you need.  Start by using your background readings to identify people whose research you find interesting and match your own interests.  Pick someone who is currently active in the field and publishing. They will be more likely to have the financial and field support you need.  Whatever you do, do not accept a position if you have not met the advisor or, more importantly, their graduate students.  Remember you will be spending a lot of time with this person over the next 5-8 years.  This is all about “fit” and if you “don’t fit” then things could go horribly wrong.  Current graduates students will always be honest about what its like working with Dr. X, and what their department is like.  In my own career, I choose not to work with one scientist because their graduate students were generally negative about their time in the lab.  Once you pick the advisor, the school will be picked for you.
9. Email, Email, and Email some more. Once you find the person (and hopefully, people) you would like to work with (you want options) then you email them.  You want to make contact with this person.  Express your interest in their research.  Ask them questions about their research.  Ask for pdf’s of their work.  Ask them if they have graduate opportunities in their laboratory.  Ask them if you can come and visit. You are interviewing this person as much as they are you, so do not waste the opportunity to gain more information.  Don’t worry if they don’t immediately respond, they will be busy or even away at sea.  Send a reminder (two max).  If they don’t respond to you, or if you get a negative response, this is not bad.  In either of these cases you probably don’t want to be that person’s graduate student anyway.
10. The GRE, Why It Hates You, and All The Other Stuff You Need To Get Into Graduate School. The GRE is a SOB but a necessarily evil.  Take it and score high, no problem.  Score low, things are not over but more become difficult.  In my experience, the GRE measures less what you know but rather how well you can take a test.  Although expensive, it would be well worth the money to take a GRE course.  Now in actuality the GRE is just single metric in which your application is viewed.  A high GPA, research experience, and a well-articulated essay go much further and can outweigh any GRE score (as long as you are above a minimum standard, but even that can be flexible).  If you are still an undergraduate (or even not) get some (any) research experience.  It shows dedication to and a familiarity with working in a laboratory or doing research.  Those experiences can also lead to strong letters of recommendation, which you will also need.  You don’t want your only letters coming from a course instructor with whom you took one class.  Now, here is the part that no one ever mentions.  Having a strong faculty advocate for your admission is essential.  This is why Number 9 is so important.  Typically, all the graduate applicants files are passed around the department and faculty are asked to make their picks.  If a faculty member wants you they will serve as an informal advocate in your behalf.  “I know so-so’s GRE’s are low, but I have had great interactions with this person, they visited the lab, they have X,Y,Z, and ultimately I think they will be a great fit.”
11. You Better Make Sure You Really Love This.  See Number 1

The post So You Want to Be A Deep-Sea Biologist? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The thermal glider prototype, which can drop to depths of 1,200 meters below the sea surface, likely will set off on a trans-Atlantic voyage from St. Thomas soon.

“If all goes well, we’ll send it to the Canary Islands,”  said Chip Haldeman, a marine technician at Rutgers’ Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.

Craig McClain calls the Slocum autonomous underwater vehicle “an oceanographer’s best friend“.

The robotic glider being prepared in the Virgin Islands is operated by researchers at Rutgers University and Teledyne Webb research.  The gliders collect information on conductivity, temperature and depth for oceanographic research, but they can be programmed to collect other data. Rutgers has a fleet of 20 thermal gliders. The robots can descend up to 2000 m depth, then periodically resurface to “phone home,” download data, and get a fix on their positions.

Hat tip to CK for the link.

The post Robot glider to make Trans-Atlantic journey first appeared on Deep Sea News.