Women in Ocean Science Podcast

Our polar regions are often considered to be pristine untouched waters, largely due their remoteness and lack of civilization, yet both the Arctic and Antarctica are subject to local pollution from tourism, fishing and research activities. On today’s episode, we sit down with Sarah Reed, ships ops manager and technician at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, to chat about her recent paper on microplastics in marine sediments near Rothera Research Station, Antarctica.

Marine mycology - have you heard of it? Also known as, the branch of biology concerned with the study of marine fungi. Today’s podcast guest, Cordelia Roberts, is a PhD candidate studying the interaction of the understudied marine fungi, with marine snow particles in both open and coastal oceans and even polar seas! And she’s here today to encourage women and girls to get into and pioneer the novel research area of marine mycology, and to show the rest of the world that being a marine biologist isn’t just about splashing about with dolphins and turtles. On this episode, we’ll be chatting through her paper, titled: Chytrid fungi shape bacterial communities on model particulate organic matter and before you click off before it sounds too complex, Cordelia does a fantastic job of breaking down exactly what this means and why this is such a cool field of research.

The plight of coral reefs is well known and urgent. Feeling the pressures of a changing climate, reefs around the world have become an ecosystem in crisis, and as global temperatures continue to increase, a question on everybody’s lips is - will coral reefs be able to adapt to what’s to come. We sit down with Kelsey Archer Barhill, a PhD student at University of Edinburgh, to discuss her paper on just this, titled: ​​Acclimatization Drives Differences in Reef-Building Coral Calcification Rates. On this episode, we’ll be chatting about Kelsey’s journey moving from tropical to deep sea corals, and what it was like getting those manuscripts published with the help of an incredible majority-female team.

Breaking boundaries as an undergraduate student, Meredith is an fisheries research student at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, who had the opportunity to do her own research on sailfish and sea surface temperature. In this episode, we discuss Meredith’s paper, titled: Atlantic Sailfish (Istiophorus albicans) Distribution off the East Coast of Florida from 2003 to 2018 in Response to Sea Surface Temperature.

Joining this episode of the Women in Ocean Science podcast is Jessica Harvey Carroll, a PhD researcher studying how stress affects animal behaviour and population dynamics at the university of St Andrews. In this episode, Jessica talks about her recent paper, published in Nature, which looks at The impact of injury on apparent survival of whale sharks in South Ari Atoll Marine Protected Area, Maldives.

As if coral reefs didn’t face enough anthropogenic pressures already, reefs across the world have to deal with a number of environmental pressures too. Amongst these is stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) a novel white plague that infects many species, is highly contagious, and causes rapid mortality. On today's episode of the podcast, we’re joined by Franziska Elmer, to discuss her paper titled: Ecological consequences of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease in the Turks and Caicos Islands. A research fellow at the Center for Marine Resource Studies in South Caicos, Turks and Caicos Islands. Her research focuses are coral recruitment, stony coral tissue loss disease and the impact of Sargassum beaching events on ecosystems and local communities.

6 years ago, Clare was working a job she hated in a high-pressured accountancy firm in London. But then one day, after over 12 hours in the office, she came home and had a major re-assessment of what she wanted to do with her life - and today, she’s living her childhood dream and is studying whales. Now PhD candidate at the University of Oslo, Clare is researching the effects of pollution in Norwegian orcas. On this episode, we discuss her paper, titled “Preying on seals pushes killer whales from Norway above pollution effects thresholds” and why having a child and doing marine science as woman shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

Like many countries around the world, Indonesia experienced the virtual halt to tourism, caused by COVID-19, and indeed, after almost two years, has only just re-opened its borders to tourists. But given the sudden and prolonged removal of an industry that employed 10% of Indonesia’s worldforce prior to the pandemic, it raises questions as to how communities, and the ecosystems on which they depend, have fared. On this episode of the podcast, we delve into the social side of marine science, to discuss a very interesting paper authored by marine ecologist, tourism consultant, and social scientist, Chloe King. The paper is called: Reimagining resilience: COVID-19 and marine tourism in Indonesia, and alongside it’s assessment of socio-ecological systems and livelihood capital, it highlights just how critical it is to empower and invest in local communities going forward.

On this episode of the WOS podcast we’re joined by Cassie Pardee, the co-founder of Poseidon Fisheries Research, based out of Hawaii. Her research lab focuses on the life-history of coral reef species determining the age, growth, and maturity of commonly targeted fish for the use in stock assessments and fishery management. Cassie joins us to discuss her paper, titled: Growth and maturation of three commercially important coral reef species from American Samoa, discussing not only the science, but about Cassie’s passion for working with local fishermen to collect data and sharing the results back with the local fishing community.

This episode dives into the world of bioacoustics, otherwise known as the soundscape of the natural world. When Jaques Cousteau wrote his film, Le Mond du Silence, he actually got it wrong, because instead of being a silent world - the ocean is actually a pretty noisy place, with sound being a medium that species depend on. Today’s guest Ann Osiecka, a PhD student at the University of Gdańsk, discusses the role of these acoustics in hunting in pinnipeds (the seal, sealion, walrus family), in her paper titled: The diel pattern in harbour porpoise clicking behaviour is not a response to prey activity. From access to opportunities to role models, we chat with Ann on the importance of visibility for people from 'unlikely' places in a marine science career.