by Sally Winkler
Welcome to Destination: Science!, a new series about the places where people are involved in scientific pursuits around the world. We are so excited to kick off this series with a Skype chat with Erin Dillon, 22, a marine biologist with some serious geographical cred.
This spring, Erin was a researcher aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy, a ship capable of cruising through ice up to 4.5 feet thick. Best of all, the Healy is outfitted with tons of lab space, and some of it belonged to Erin and her teammates. A few years ago, researchers discovered a mysterious algae bloom under an Arctic ice sheet, and this spring, Erin was part of a team led by Stanford professor Kevin Arrigo that returned to the Arctic to study the evolution of the bloom – what causes the bloom to appear and how can the photosynthesis-dependent algae survive in the dark environment under the ice?
Aboard Healy, Erin worked 12 hour shifts every day – 3am to 3pm. Mostly, her responsibilities were in the lab: she filtered chlorophyll from water samples taken from different depths. She didn’t seem to mind the harsh hours, “Perpetual sunlight – it was so pretty. You get up at 3 a.m. and walk outside, and oh my God, it’s so gorgeous, just being surrounded by ice.” Besides meals, there were other things to break up the lab work: “We had these little pagers, and sometimes they would page us if they saw polar bears from the bridge.” Sounds like a good excuse for a lab break!
Welcome to Destination: Science!, a new series about the places where people are involved in scientific pursuits around the world. We are so excited to kick off this series with a Skype chat with Erin Dillon, 22, a marine biologist with some serious geographical cred.
This spring, Erin was a researcher aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy, a ship capable of cruising through ice up to 4.5 feet thick. Best of all, the Healy is outfitted with tons of lab space, and some of it belonged to Erin and her teammates. A few years ago, researchers discovered a mysterious algae bloom under an Arctic ice sheet, and this spring, Erin was part of a team led by Stanford professor Kevin Arrigo that returned to the Arctic to study the evolution of the bloom – what causes the bloom to appear and how can the photosynthesis-dependent algae survive in the dark environment under the ice?
Aboard Healy, Erin worked 12 hour shifts every day – 3am to 3pm. Mostly, her responsibilities were in the lab: she filtered chlorophyll from water samples taken from different depths. She didn’t seem to mind the harsh hours, “Perpetual sunlight – it was so pretty. You get up at 3 a.m. and walk outside, and oh my God, it’s so gorgeous, just being surrounded by ice.” Besides meals, there were other things to break up the lab work: “We had these little pagers, and sometimes they would page us if they saw polar bears from the bridge.” Sounds like a good excuse for a lab break!
Erin filters chlorophyll in aboard Healy. “I felt like I fit right in with the scientists”.
However, not all interruptions were that adorable. Once, Erin was working at her computer in lab when she heard “…this giant crunching noise – kind of like the Titantic almost. What was that?!” A co-worker told her it was the sound of the ship hitting ice for the first time. Fun!
The first time Erin went out on the ice, the ship started to break away from the ice sheet she was standing on! But that didn’t stop the fun!
Erin’s co-workers were a diverse group; Healy has a large staff of Coast Guard sailors that run the ship and support the scientists. In addition to Erin’s biological oceanography work, other research groups from institutions around the world were investigating a diverse range of topics, including physical oceanography, zooplankton, sea-floor ecology, and ice optics. Together with the ice optics team, Erin got to walk out on the ice. “I am standing on the Arctic Ocean! How cool is that?!” She assured me that she didn’t fall through the (relatively) thin first-year ice, “Though I did fall into a melt pond one time…” she adds with a shrug. I guess falling into a pool of water on top of an ice sheet on top of THE ENTIRE ARCTIC OCEAN isn’t as terrifying as it seems…
Though Erin didn’t take an Arctic dive this summer, she did take some tropical ones – we switched gears and began talking about her current research in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. She’s “…reconstructing mid-Holocene shark baselines in Bocas del Toro, which is in the Caribbean. I’m basically trying to figure out how many sharks and what families of sharks were present before humans had a really big impact on that area. This involves taking a bunch of sediment samples from both modern reefs and… this really cool mid-Holocene (6000 to 7000 year-old) reef that’s been dug out and is totally dry.”
Though Erin didn’t take an Arctic dive this summer, she did take some tropical ones – we switched gears and began talking about her current research in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. She’s “…reconstructing mid-Holocene shark baselines in Bocas del Toro, which is in the Caribbean. I’m basically trying to figure out how many sharks and what families of sharks were present before humans had a really big impact on that area. This involves taking a bunch of sediment samples from both modern reefs and… this really cool mid-Holocene (6000 to 7000 year-old) reef that’s been dug out and is totally dry.”
Erin collects sediment from modern (top, underwater) and ancient reefs. Modern reef collection proved more difficult; “For every shovel of sand that goes into the bag, some of it falls out. You’re shoveling and shoveling and shoveling….”
In these reef-floor samples, Erin is searching, needle-in-a-haystack style, for dermal denticles, teeth-like scales that coat sharks’ skin. Then, she’ll identify the family of shark that each denticle came from, and, by comparing the modern and ancient samples, she’ll be able to better understand “What is pristine? How many sharks were there not just 50 years, but thousands of years ago – before artisanal fishing, before anyone was there?” Erin blogs about the nitty-gritty details of her experiments; “We always need science and communication. I called it A Glimpse Beneath the Waves. [I wanted to] take the science I was doing and tell a story with it. People hear about the conclusions of a paper or that there is a paper, but the methods sections of a paper is so dry, so I’m trying to make that exciting.” I took a look at her blog after we chatted; she’s succeeding. It’s awesome. So what’s next for Erin? In October, she’s headed to Antarctica on another research cruise, and then it’s back to Panama, this time as a Research Fellow to continue her paleoecology work. Next year, she’ll apply to PhD programs, the next step on her path towards professorhood. I asked if she’ll stay in the field or settle down in a more traditional research environment. Erin replied, “I really like traveling and doing research. I am not opposed to living internationally and doing field work.” I took in her carefree grin and commented, “You look like you’re really not opposed to it…” She laughed. “It’s been fantastic. Fieldwork is awesome.” Bonus: When Erin was aboard the USCGC Healy, she missed out on her graduation from Stanford. However, the crew held a graduation ceremony for her and another Stanford graduate on board the ship! Click here for an article and links! |