It's been a whirlwind of presentations, awards, travel, and thesis defenses in the past few months, and we have a lot to celebrate. 

Benthic Ecology Meeting 2019
Seniors Hallie Fischman and Calvin Munson gave talks at the BEM, with Hallie winning an honorable mention for best student poster talk. Junior Maya Greenhill, Dr. Robbie Lamb, Dr. Jon Witman, and collaborator Alejandro Pérez-Matus all gave wonderful talks. We made new friends and connections studying everything from marshes to polar ecology. Even though St. John's was freezing, we still had a great time! 

Thesis Talks
Seniors Hallie Fischman and Calvin Munson, and junior Maya Greenhill gave thesis talks at the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department Seminar –"Optimizing coastal dune restoration with the stress gradient hypothesis," "Coupled effects of herbivory and upwelling on Galapagos benthic communities," and "Niche complementarity and ecological function of damselfish in the Galapagos marine reserve." 

Big congrats to the whole lab – now onto gearing up for field season!

I never thought I'd walk into a kindergarten classroom wearing scuba gear, but it seemed a good way to capture our audience's attention, and keep it, while talking about urchins and marine ecology. So once we had waddled in wearing our fins, Robbie and I began our presentation at the Wheeler School with, "These are the suits we wear to work!" 

I like the idea of making marine biology real to people who don't know about it, and suppose that's why it's good (though strange) that a little girl stroked my foot halfway through the presentation – she wanted to find out what the fabric felt like, and this gave her an opportunity to find out. We showed videos/photos of the Galapagos, made analogies about chocolate milk and how delicious seaweed is to urchins, and showed our reel of coolest underwater moments. Finally, we built model urchins "Poky" and "Spiky" (aptly named by audience members) out of styrofoam balls and coffee stirrers to demonstrate how hard these creatures can be to eat. 

Our audience's energy was really refreshing. The children strained their hands towards the ceiling hoping to be called on, and made a big effort to link their own experiences to what we were presenting on. When we asked students what they most liked about the ocean, one boy tripped over his words giving a slow verbal rendition of a shark attack, and a girl proclaimed she liked "life." No arguments there. Other students were fans of manta rays, sea stars, and jumping in the waves. 

We showed pictures of ourselves as children at the beach, aged five and two. It's important to drive home that we were once little too, and that if any of these children want to grow up and become marine biologists, it's possible. In particular, I want to make sure little girls see a career in science as a real possibility – regardless of whether they take that path in the end. Funny to think of myself then, and to wonder what these children will be up to by the time they're 23. 

All in all, a successful morning, even if we did overheat a bit...

- Sofia Castello y Tickell