Two Sea Fans: Mote Marine Laboratory Podcast

Your Two Sea Fans are back—just in time to talk about tiny turtles! In this episode, Joe and Hayley catch up with Dr. Jake Lasala of Mote's Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Program in this midst of his busy fieldwork season, when he spends nights on the beach collecting and releasing sea turtle hatchlings various studies. One study is helping to investigate whether climate change might affect hatchlings' sex ratio—the number of males vs. females. Scientists know that cooler nests produce more male turtles and warmer ones produce more females. Will our changing climate make females more prevalent—and if so, will that make it harder for future generations to reproduce? We'll delve into serious questions like these, along with  sillier ones—including which hatchling species is the cutest—during this exciting episode. We also have a special treat for you: Check out this video of sea turtle hatchlings emerging from a nest studied by Mote!

Today’s episode makes us twice as happy because we have two excellent topics in store! Our guest, Jasmin Graham, has studied some of the most unusual-looking, endangered animals in the sea—sawfish, aka “danger snoots”—and she’s now advancing a critical mission: helping marine science become a more diverse field by increasing its accessibility to underrepresented minority students and researchers. Jasmin serves as Project Coordinator of MarSci-LACE (Marine Science Laboratory Alliance Center of Excellence), a multi-partner effort led by Mote and supported by a National Science Foundation grant as part of the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation. Today, she helps hosts Joe and Hayley get ready and get excited for International Sawfish Day (Oct. 17) and #BlackInMarineScience week (Nov. 29-Dec. 5) celebrated with Mote’s Empowerment Panel event! In addition to sharing her work at Mote, Jasmin tells us about her leadership of the organization Minorities in Shark Science.

Imagine a hole in the ocean floor with a bottom stretching to 350 feet deep, or deeper. That’s the type of environment Mote scientists and colleagues are exploring as they visit the Gulf of Mexico’s blue holes—underwater caves, springs and sinkholes. In this episode, one of our partnering scientists shares what lives in the depths of a blue hole. Dr. Nastassia Patin, Postdoctoral Associate at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies from University of Miami/NOAA, just published a paper on the strange microscopic life found in one of these deep, dark, chilly, acidified and low-oxygen environments: the blue hole known as AJ Hole. When this episode was recorded, Dr. Patin was visiting Mote for yet another sampling expedition to explore the tiny life forms in an even deeper blue hole called “Green Banana.” Join Dr. Patin and podcast hosts Joe and Hayley to discover the “alien” lifestyles of microbes in these deep environments, how blue hole research relates to our lives, and which fun fact blew Joe’s mind…

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Today we welcome back our favorite “ocean chemistry nut,” Dr. Emily Hall, manager of Mote’s Ocean Acidification Research Program and Chemical & Physical Ecology Program. Dr. Hall and her colleagues have been scoping out the challenges of acidification—water chemistry changes partly driven by humans—across ocean environments of the U.S. southeast. Acidification is a concern for shellfish, crabs, corals and other marine species populations that support livelihoods. Dr. Hall updates hosts Hayley and Joe on the possible—and sometimes bizarre—impacts of acidification, and how we can help deal with them. That’s the topic of a new research synthesis that she and her partners authored on behalf of the Southeast Ocean & Coastal Acidification Network (SOCAN).

Before diving into acidification in the southeast, Dr. Hall shares the latest on another project making international headlines: Exploring the chemically unique “blue holes” in the Gulf of Mexico together with Mote’s Jim Culter and multiple partners who are curious about these deep, naturally acidified environments.

Marine ecotoxicologists investigate some of the toughest challenges we must overcome to protect the ocean—in particular, how toxic substances harm marine animals and the ecosystem. Today we meet Dr. Aileen Maldonado, a Mote Postdoctoral Research Fellow who studies natural toxins and human-produced toxicants in the marine environment. In this episode, Dr. Maldonado gives hosts Joe and Hayley insight into toxic substances that concern scientists, environmental regulators and communities, and she discusses her Mote research focused on mitigation of the toxin-producing Florida red tide and on improving methods to assess the health of corals at risk from pollution and many other stressors.

In nature, many fish eat other fish—and some naturally engage in cannibalism, eating members of their own species. However, fish farming (aquaculture) operations strive to reduce that behavior and aim to raise as many healthy fish as possible to meet important needs for sustainable seafood and environmental restoration. Common snook, a Florida sportfish raised by Mote Marine Laboratory to enhance wild fisheries, are capable of snacking on their fellow snook as they grow up in aquaculture systems. Mote Postdoctoral Scientist Dr. Flavio Ribeiro is studying how to curb this behavior by investigating its biology and environmental causes. In this episode, Dr. Ribeiro tells hosts Hayley and Joe about tackling cannibalism, also known as "intraspecific prediation," during his career with multiple aquaculture-raised species.

Sea turtles are currently nesting on southwest Florida beaches: laying eggs that will hatch to produce babies known as hatchlings. On April 15, as Mote began its annual routine of monitoring these nesting beaches for research and conservation, our new Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Jake Lasala joined the "Two Sea Fans" team to describe the new research projects he is launching with Mote's Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Program. Dr. Lasala studies sea turtle mating systems and other population features to support conservation and management of these endangered and threatened reptiles. In this episode he explains why we need to investigate sea turtle mating and estimate how many females and males might be contributing to a population. He also shares why sea turtles are nicknamed  "hot chicks and cool dudes."