I'm Married - Woo Hoo! + Snorkeling Videos

About three years ago I met Rhonda Mason on a date in downtown Boston. I knew almost instantly that she was the one for me, but it naturally took some time to convince her that I was the one for her. When we were dating, Rhonda helped me find my current marine biology professor job in Florida. After I interviewed and got the job I asked her to marry me and move South. She said yes! We were fiances for two years, then on the 21st of June, 2014 we had a big, wonderful wedding near her hometown in New Hampshire. I am SO HAPPY!

For our honeymoon we decided to do it by car, since we already live in the tropical paradise of Florida, and we could take more water toys with us that way. (Shortly prior to the wedding we had replaced my red rusty minivan with a fresh blue minivan with working AC - luxurious!) The first couple nights we stayed at the Hampton Inn at Manatee Bay, Key Largo. In seagrassy Tarpon Basin behind the hotel is where I shot this snorkeling video. We also snorkeled on the reefs near Key Largo from the charters at Pennekamp State Park.



For the second part of the honeymoon we stayed further west at Parmer's Resort on little torch key (see hammock picture).

We snorkeled near shore at Bahia Honda State Park, on Looe Key Reef via a charter boat, and at Fort Jefferson after riding out to that Historic Fort island on the Yankee Freedom II ferry. This video, mostly shot by Rhonda is a compilation from all our reef snorkeling trips.

Survived a Semester of Professing

My first semester as an assistant professor at Florida Gulf Coast University was busy (it’s now the second semester and I’m just getting a chance to blog about the first), but it went pretty well. The classes I taught were:

Marine Ecology- An upper level undergraduate elective with 31 students. This was my big lecture course, and the one that required the most preparation and grading. It was fun getting immersed in marine biology topics that I had always loved but which hadn’t been part of my own research. I spent late nights making slide presentations and writing test questions about deep sea hydrothermal vents, whales, coral reefs, sharks, sea turtles, barnacle sexual behavior, etc. My students were mostly junior and senior environmental science or marine science majors. There was a wide range in their readiness for the class, but they all managed to pass with at least a C. One weird-but-good teaching technique that I got from another FGCU professor was to give the students a lot of hard study questions with no answer key, but to select their test questions from the pool of study questions.

The best part of the semester was when we took a snorkeling field trip to the Florida Keys Marine Lab in early November. We spent all day on the boat, visiting some shallow nearshore habitats, and a nearly-pristine offshore reef with water as clear as the sky. A photography student, Samantha Oliver, came with us and took a lot of cool pictures:

Current Topics: Seagrass Ecology- The other two classes I taught were short “discussion” courses, where the students had to read a scientific paper about seagrass each week and then we would talk about it. One of the two classes was a graduate course with two students, and the other was an undergraduate course with 18 students. The grad student course pretty much taught itself, but I kind of struggled to get some of the undergraduates motivated. In the undergrads’ defense, they hadn’t known what the course was going to be about when they registered because it was just listed as “Current Topics: Biology, Instructor: Staff” and they assigned me to it at the last minute. If that happens again I’ll be loose with the topic and not try to stick with just seagrass.

Besides the courses I taught, I also sat in on a rigorous computer mapping (GIS) class taught by another professor in the Marine and Ecological Sciences department. That was to better qualify myself for research funding in the form of government contracts for seagrass monitoring. Environmental monitoring contracts typically require maps and spatially-explicit data analyses among their “deliverables.” It was good that I took the class, because I now have a grant now to do a year’s worth of seagrass monitoring in the Caloosahatchee River Estuary, and I’ve recruited some of the hotshot snorkelers from my Marine Ecology class to help with that. The project is related to something called the “Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan,” which aims to improve the health of estuaries and wetlands by restoring more natural patterns of freshwater flow from central Florida to the everglades.

There’s a lot more that happened in my first semester, too, but I don’t want to go on and on about it in my blog. My strategy for blogging this year will be to have more frequent but shorter / sloppier posts about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

Happy New Year.

Windsurf Turtle Rescue; Weather and Range Limits

I came across a story today about a Texas windsurfer who heroically rescued a green sea turtle (Chelonias mydas). The turtle was one of many in the area that had been stunned by a recent cold snap that affected water temperatures in the Laguna Madre.

Adult green sea turtles are herbivores that mainly eat seagrass.


Green turtles are happiest in water warmer than about 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit), but they can tolerate somewhat colder water, at least for a while. If it gets as cold as 8 Celsius (46 Fahrenheit), however, they can barely swim, and they will die if it doesn't warm up. Usually the turtles flee if it starts getting too cold where they are, but in a shallow bay, like Texas' Laguna Madre, the water temperature may drop faster than the turtles can find their way out to warmer open water.

Although animals being killed by extreme hot or cold weather is a normal part of nature; one of the mechanisms that sets the geographic range boundaries of particular species, it's sad when it affects critters like the green turtle, whose populations are struggling to recover from human impacts like overhunting, loss of nesting habitat, and plastic ocean trash. So I don't think it's "unfair" for people to intervene by assisting such endangered species when they're caught off guard by something like a cold snap. In fact, it's awesome.

The Basic Evolutionary Explanation for Why We Age

Evolution by natural selection favors traits that enhance an organism's chances of surviving and reproducing. So you'd think evolution would lead to organisms that could stay strong, healthy, and fertile forever.

Obviously, though, that's not the case. Almost all species of animal, including humans, have a limited lifespan and lose their fitness and fertility as they age. Why?

There are a couple of theories. The main one, which is still the most accepted, was first articulated in the 1950s by a scarily intense-looking British MD named Peter Medawar (below). Dude, you're freaking me out with that cold stare!

Anyway, Medawar's theory has to do with the fact that nature is harsh, and most wild animals die from things like predators, accidents, or disease well before they reach their maximum lifespan. That means that old individuals are rare in animal populations, even when age itself is not what's killing them. You can see that illustrated in the graph below, which I made for a hypothetical animal species in which individuals have a 50% chance of getting killed in any given year. Remember that this demographic pattern arises even without aging. I haven't said anything yet about why aging occurs, but I'm getting to it.

Since the chances of surviving a long time in a dangerous environment are slim, there's strong evolutionary pressure for animals to kick ass and reproduce when they're young, whereas there's little pressure for them to maintain their health and fertility beyond the age when they're likely to be dead anyway. It's easy for genetic mutations that cause deterioration with age to accumulate in a population where most of the individuals breed and die before they're old enough for the deterioration to start. For example, natural selection would quickly get rid of a mutant gene that caused arthritis early in life, because those that had the gene would be less likely to reproduce. But natural selection wouldn't easily get rid of a gene that caused arthritis late in life, because most individuals with the gene would have already reproduced and died before the arthritis could interfere. Genes that cause age-related ailments may spread even easier if they have beneficial effects when the organisms that have them are young. E.g., evolution would favor a gene that increased early reproduction, even if the same gene lead to sterility in older individuals.

One of the predictions of Medawar's theory is that species that lead dangerous lives in nature will also tend to age early, while species that have few predators or risks will have evolved to stay healthy and fertile longer. That's why mice, which are very vulnerable to predation in the wild, only live a couple years in captivity, while the Aldabra Giant Tortoise, which has no natural enemies, may have an unlimited lifespan.

And what a life it is!

Humans are a funny case because modern civilization has drastically reduced our chances of getting killed by predators, diseases and accidents, but evolution hasn't had enough time to push back our aging process accordingly. Given enough generations of modernity, we could potentially evolve to stay healthy and fertile longer, but there are a lot of other things going on with human population and society that make our future evolution hard to predict.

North vs. South

I'm realizing more and more that Fort Pierce is awesome for watersports. Here's a picture of some kiters Tuesday at Jetty Park on the S side of the inlet near my apartment.

Today the wind direction was different (SE instead of E) so I took the opportunity to grab an a.m. session at the State Park on the N side of the inlet. The rangers there have a flag system to warn people about aquatic dangers. This morning two reds and a purple were flying.

The reds mean you're not supposed to go swimming, and the purple means watch out for "dangerous marine life"; i.e. the Portugese Man-O-War jellies that wash inshore when there are strong E winds.

Well, I didn't see any PMOW's, but I did see some surfers and a kiteboarder out there, so I took the flags to be just a "guidelines". There was plenty of breeze, so I used my 5.2 sail and 87 liter board. Getting out wasn't too hard since the gently sloping beach broke the waves gradually, and the jetty smoothed out the chop.

It was the funnest Florida windsurfing session yet. I even saw some smallish sea turtles and a mediumish shark rise up out of the face of a wave. I think the turtles were green sea turtles. Seeing them in the water this morning made reading about them during my research at work today really cool.

Scientists, a Windsurfer, a Sunset, and a Turtle

There won't be much of a narrative to this blog post. I'm just putting up some cool, recent pictures that have been sitting on my computer. The first is a group photo of the Marine Biodiversity Lab at VIMS.

[Sorry, pictures hosted elsewhere lost to time.]

From left:
1) Matt Whalen, a recent William and Mary grad who has been working as a tech in our lab for a year and will be starting as a grad student in the fall. He'll be taking my office and my apartment when I leave, so we joke that he's stealing my life.
2) Jon Lefcheck, a rising junior at Colby College who has been working with us this summer on a Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) Fellowship. He might end up being a grad student here, too; I started as an REU back in 2001 (time flies).
3) Will Tarantino, a masters student in the lab. He's doing some kind of complex mathematical modeling work that the rest of us don't understand, and he spends a lot of time out in California at UC Davis. Will was on the William and Mary track team and he's a ridiculously fast runner. When he and Matt were fighting for my office the other day, Will proposed that they settle the grievance with a footrace. Matt wisely refused.
4) Althea Moore, a masters student in our lab who is just starting her second year. She's brilliant and gorgeous.
5) J. Paul Richardson, our lab manager. He is the man, basically. Plus he windsurfs and occasionally blogs.
6) Rachael Blake, a PhD student who will take over the "senior grad student" role when I leave. She's doing a really cool project studying the influence of shoreline development and global warming on underwater eelgrass beds.
7) Me.
8) J. Emmett Duffy, PhD. He's super smart and pretty famous in the world of ecology and marine biology, plus he's a good guy to work for. He likes some of the same weird music that I do, like the French band "Air".

The next picture is a big snapping turtle that we intercepted crossing the road last month. We put her in a cardboard box and carried her back to the pond.

[Sorry, pictures hosted elsewhere lost to time.]

Next up is a picture of folks from our lab and some other friends at Rodanthe Watersports and Campground in the Outer Banks two weeks ago. We had a great Saturday of beach play, windsurfing, and carousing, but we got chased out early Sunday by morning rainsqualls and reports of an incoming tropical storm.

[Sorry, pictures hosted elsewhere lost to time.]

And finally, just to wrap it up, here's the sunset itself.

[Sorry, pictures hosted elsewhere lost to time.]

When Turtles Attack

Donatello the Diamondback Terrapin is our mascot here in the VIMS Marine Biodiversity Lab. Some construction workers found him and brought him to us a couple years ago when he was just a wee hatchling. Donny adapted to captivity pretty well, and quickly grew to full size for a male. He is easily goaded into snapping at fingers through the glass, providing good entertainment for young visitors to the lab.



Diamondback terrapins are in the same taxonomic group as freshwater turtles, but they are unique in being the only species to live exclusively in brackish estuaries like Chesapeake Bay.