Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

Sea Change Students are Really Cruising: This statement is true on many levels. Our Sea Change semester students are in the last few weeks of the program here at the lab. Time flies every semester, but with such a mild fall, the final research cruise of the season earlier this month snuck up on us all. Unlike the first cruise of the year, when most are performing a sampling task for the first time, students are a well-oiled machine by their final cruise. Seeing so much growth in such little time never gets old. David Fields, who is a senior research scientist as well as a Sea Change instructor remarked, “Most come to the program with little or no experience. When they leave most of them become capable of taking in on as a job. It’s a great program!” We couldn’t agree more, David. #scienceeducation #futureoceanleaders #oceanscience

Bluebird Day for Blue Ventures: The skies were appropriately clear last week as several Bigelowians ventured to the Blue Venture Investment Summit, where we heard ideas that can shape the blue economy from a group of business leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs. The algae and other microscopic life we study hold tremendous potential to transform the way the world eats, how we cure disease, and the materials we use to build a sustainable future. As scientists and innovators, we’re excited to help entrepreneurs and investors tap into that potential. Special thanks to our hosts at Gulf of Maine Ventures and to everyone who showed up to share ideas and help drive the blue economy forward! #mainejobs #blueeconomy #algaepower

Bigelow-Aglow: Last week we had a great time at the Gardens Aglow Community Night at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, where we spread the word about ocean science and had fun with folks of all ages while making plankton ornaments. Thanks to the Bigelowians Evan and Abby for making it happen, to our hosts at the gardens, and to everyone in the community who made it out for this special night! #oceanscience #gardensaglow #community

Deep Dive on Deep Coral: Ocean on Tap is tomorrow (Thursday) night at 6 p.m.! Join Dr. Keir Macartney at Footbridge Brewery for a fascinating discussion of life on coral reefs in the ocean's mysterious "Twilight Zone." #OceanOnTap #oceanscience #deepwatercoral #twilightzone

NEXT 50 | Advanced Computing: We believe that the most important discoveries for our planet’s future require working at the intersection of disciplines. Henry Bryant Bigelow revolutionized the field of oceanography by encouraging an approach that fused multiple scientific disciplines together to study the sea with a broader, more holistic perspective. Our founders were such firm believers in this mindset that they named Bigelow Laboratory after him and made that idea core to our mission. One method that continually informs our interdisciplinary approach is advanced computing. Whether we’re studying something as tiny as the genome of a virus or as large and complex as climate change, data analysis, algorithms, and now, AI, are helping fuel our discoveries and solutions. The innovations that have come out of our lab over the last five decades have uniquely positioned us to tackle the challenges of the future. Throughout our anniversary year, we’re looking back at where we've been and ahead to the discoveries, solutions, and inspiration we'll create over the next 50 years! #Next50 #basicscience #oceanscience - Historical Image: Jean Garside and Toby Garfield look over data in the 1980s - Modern Image: Research Scientist Julia Brown (foreground) leading a bioinformatics workshop.

Working on Our Cores: Senior Research Associate Tim D’Angelo looks on as the subsurface fruits are retrieved during a recent coring expedition on board the R/V Bowditch. This galvanized steel torpedo-shaped device (anyone old enough to remember the lawn game Jarts?) is dropped into the sediment, where 100+ kilograms of weight punches through the bottom of the river. The sediment is then trapped in the core barrel and retrieved for geochemical, microbiological, and molecular investigations. This particular sample is roughly a meter of sediment from the bottom of the Damariscotta River. Several Bigelow researchers are interested in this sediment, which may contain records of past microbes alongside modern anaerobic ones! Photo: Melody Lindsay #oceanscience #coresample #fieldworkfriday #jarts

Front Page of The Boston Globe: Senior Research Scientist Doug Rasher and his team have pulled together the first comprehensive study of Maine’s kelp in two decades, showing widespread collapse of kelp forests along the southern coast as water temperatures rise to inhospitable levels, especially in the spring and summer. Their findings, published recently in the journal Ecology, were just picked up in The Boston Globe and featured on the front page, highlighting the public's concern about the impact warming ocean temperatures could have on the region's fisheries and economy. In a positive bit of news healthy forests still thrive in the cooler northern part of the coastline, but as Rasher points out in the recent story, we'll need to do more to protect them given their importance to this delicate ecosystem. Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/e7sN3pUj #oceanscience #climatechange #kelpforests #kelp

COBRA Call Out in Nature: Geobiology is a relatively new, flexible field that brings together scientists of many different disciplines to understand the interactions between life and the solid planet. The field has made significant leaps in the last decade thanks to programs and researchers like ours that are fostering the development and application of breakthrough technologies to study the opaque microbial world of the subsurface. The Crustal Ocean Biosphere Research Accelerator program — which Beth Orcutt, our VP of research is the associate director of — was called out as one of the programs helping advance the field of geobiology in a recent Nature Editorial. COBRA is helping shed light on understudied deep-sea ecosystems and the risks they may face in light of commercial deep-sea mining. Nature article can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eEc289NW And if you’d like to drill down (see what we did there) on some of the subsurface methods we’re using to further the field, here are two great stories. Marine Microbes’ Outsized Role in Carbon Cycle - https://lnkd.in/evMuWcPD Hidden Activity of Life Below Ground - https://lnkd.in/eaHSCK2n IMAGE: Research Scientist Melody Lindsay, whose science is featured in the above articles, working in our lab. #oceanscience #geobiology #microbes

Our Sea Change Semester students take regular research cruises on the R/V Bowditch, but they recently hopped aboard the F/V Sea Swallow with Capt. Clive Farrin (and sternman Sam) for a firsthand and local look at Maine’s lobster fishery. The students went out in groups and learned about lobster biology as well as the management of the fishery over the last 100 or so years, before heading into an afternoon discussion on humans’ relationship with the ocean. If you’re interested in heading out there yourself, Clive regularly does working lobster boat tours to the public, under the business name “Go Lobstering!” #oceanscience #scienceeducation #lobster

Question 2 on this year’s state ballot asks voters to support a $25 million bond that will further strengthen research and development in Maine. That includes investments in specific areas such as biotechnology, marine technology and aquaculture, forest products and agriculture, and environmental technologies. A Yes on 2 would ensure that Maine continues to grow and attract the innovative companies and talented workforce we need for a healthy and vibrant economy. We recently published our perspective, along with our partners at MDI Biological Laboratory, in the Portland Press Herald, which outlines the potential positive impacts and how these funds could be used. Read the full column at the link below and please remember to vote! https://ow.ly/pbbl50TZmJL #maine #innovation #science #vote