A Sinking Ship Part 1

I have spent all of this week working on archiving some data for my boss, Kim, as she wrapped up a major project with an awesome publication in Marine and Coastal Fisheries (September 2025), that you can read here. This project is built on an ecosystem model that she developed, and that we have adjusted for our current work, to understand how nutrient reductions and hypoxia may affect key fisheries species within the northern Gulf of Mexico. For this work, she used Monte Carlo simulations to determine the probability of outcomes and to evaluate uncertainty ranges. Monte Carlo simulations are performed within our modeling software by allowing the software to run the model using a range of possible values for each parameter. These simulations allow researchers to hone in on uncertainty around their outcomes, as we don't always know the exact parameters for every single group in our model. Therefore, these Monte Carlo simulations run through a lot of simulations to provide better estimates of reality. In this case, I am working to archive all of these Monte Carlo simulations so that future researchers can use them to re-evaluate this work, if they so choose, which means cataloging over 4000 data files, which is a somewhat lengthy process that has taken up most of this week.

However, I am really excited that this weekend, i leave to support our neighboring lab's research project. The Hamdan lab is a microbial ecology lab who does a lot of work understanding how disturbance affects the microbial communities in the deep sea and they have research investigating community shifts after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, microbial communities surrounding shipwrecks, and work investigating how shipwreck degradation may influence microbial communities. On Sunday evening/Monday morning, I am joining this lab to conduct sediment sampling off the coast of Florida, where the SS United States will be sunk in May 2026 to create an artificial reef. The Hamdan lab will conduct this before-sinking sampling, a post-sinking sampling, and then another post-sinking sampling but approximately one year after the creation of the artificial reef. This will be my first time on an overnight research expedition, but I am so happy to lend a hand and gain some new experience. Our science team consists of a mix of scientists, undergraduate students, undergraduate researchers in the Hamdan lab, and some faculty and staff who have little to no experience in marine mud collection. I will be supervising a small team of these individuals as a science team lead, with other teams led by scientists from the Hamdan lab. We will be working approximately 30 hours straight once we get to the site, after sailing for 17 hours, but the planning team has coordinated work schedules so that team members switch out for meals and switch out during work times. 

Stay tuned for next week's blog, as we expect to get back to shore very early Thursday morning, so I should have stories and plenty of pictures to share for next week's blog. The joys and excitement of being a marine scientist.