We welcomed two undergraduate interns to the lab this week as part of our 8-week summer research experience for undergraduates program. While REU is an NSF program, many universities across the United States have adopted the initialism to refer to any paid opportunity for undergraduates to work in a laboratory or field setting supervised by a faculty member. As part of a grant I was awarded to increase workforce development opportunities for undergraduate students in Mississippi, with a specific focus on Mississippi HBCUs, Kim and I were able to hire two students to work with us for eight weeks this summer to complete a diet composition study for 8 fish species that are somewhat data limited for our ecosystem model. We will be collecting fish, dissecting them, and analyzing their stomach contents to determine what they are eating and in what proportion. 

This week, I planned on training the undergraduates in our water quality methods and then we were expecting to go to do our bimonthly water quality work on Wednesday, Thursday, and today. However, due to a small craft advisory and coastal flooding, we were unable to go out for this water quality work and we have pushed it to next week. Instead, we took our seine nets out and completed our first round of fish collections at three sites across the Mississippi coast. While the winds and waves were strong, we pushed through and caught a lot of fish, including a lot of our target species, which we brought back to the lab for the summer projects. You can see a snapshot of our frozen samples here. We also answered lots of questions from curious community members, including questions about the mating horseshoe crabs at one of the beaches. One of the biggest learning moments of the fishing trip was the importance of fishing multiple times at the same location. At our final site, we caught more than 100 fish on our first replicate and then less than ten on our second replicate.

Next week, we will spend most of the week in the field for our bimonthly water quality research, but we will be back to complete more fish work throughout the summer. We have multiple trips planned so that we can collect data at various times across the summer, at multiple locations, and using a few different sampling methods to try and generate as comprehensive a data set as possible. Stay tuned for more adventures on the water!

All fish collections were possible under MDMR Scientific Research Permit SRP-008-26 and fish sampling protocols under approved USM IACUC 25082602.

This week, or really the very end of last week, we got the BlueBoat back with her final upgrades. Our amazing colleague who has been outfitting the BlueBoat to make her research-ready retires in a few weeks and we asked for a few small additions and modifications before he enjoys retirement. Pictured here is the BlueBoat with her three new features: handles for easy retrieval and carrying, additional cable security and waterproofing, and side bumpers to protect the BlueBoat from scratches if she runs along the research vessel. Our colleague also added protection around the metal A-frame to prevent accidentally cuts, but the protection impeded the sensor housing so I had it removed. We also upgraded our computer and purchased a Rough Book to make field work more convenient. Previously, I had been using my work laptop in the field and while we didn't have any major problems, our Rough Book is more weather and splash resistant than my work computer. These upgrades will come in handy as I set out in the field next week for our June water quality sampling trip and then I will bring the field laptop when I cruise on a multi-day expedition a few weeks later. More on that multi-day cruise in a later blog.

One item that we couldn't upgrade due to timing and slightly due to the availability of materials is the long cable you can see on top of the BlueBoat wrapped around the extension cord reel. This cable connects to the power box inside the protective gray case, which gets power from an onboard battery and provides power to the nitrate sensor that we mount on the stern of the BlueBoat. However, this cable is 25 meters long (82-ish feet), so it takes up a lot of room on top of the mounting platform. I had hoped that we could find a way to store the cable in one of the pontoons but the challenge is that the cable would have to enter AND exit the pontoon through two different waterproof entry/exit points. I found two options but neither were large enough to fit the cable and I don't feel comfortable drilling holes into this vessel to create a workaround. There are companies that sell the cable we use in smaller sizes so we could perhaps purchase a smaller cable and solve the challenge of having excess cable on the BlueBoat.

This week has been a busy week but we've mostly been writing papers, making revisions, and crafting a grant proposal at the lab. Unfortunately, none of these are the usual exciting updates I provide. I will, instead, talk briefly about Kim's great idea and how Hannah and I tested a prototype and will hopefully be testing the updated version soon.

When we go to the field to conduct our water quality sampling work, we perform three sets of data collection and/or sample collections. We complete a vertical profile, where one or two team members lower a multi-parameter water quality device slowly to get readings every 0.5 or 1.0 meters, depending on the water depth. The water quality device has a digital screen that shows the team member(s) various measurements as the device goes through the water, and the team member(s) record those measurements on our waterproof data sheets. At the same time, our BlueBoat uncrewed surface vessel drives itself across the water to collect surface measurements every 1-2 minutes. Here, we are gathering more points at the surface to help our hydrodynamic modeling team and we are collecting an additional variable that our multi-parameter device cannot record: nitrogen (nitrate). Nitrate is a limiting nutrient in the ocean, which means that a lack of nitrate limits the growth of primary producers, like seagrasses and phytoplankton. Too much nitrate, however, causes algal blooms, which you've likely heard about in the news, as these harmful algal blooms often occur off the coast of Florida, when excess nutrients end up in coastal waterways. For our work, understanding the amount of nitrogen in our water and its distribution helps us understand the primary productivity in our system and informs the base of our food web model.

The third type of data we collect in the field for these water quality trips are water samples. As most water quality meters do not have sensors for important nutrients like nitrate, nitrite, sulfate, and others, we instead collect water samples at the water surface, mid-way down, and right above the bottom of the water column to send to our colleagues who can analyze the nutrients in the lab. For these water collections, we lower a LaMotte horizontal water sampler, shown in the picture here, until we get to our depth and then we let the metal messenger slide down the rope which hits two latches and seals the ends of the tube, trapping the water sample inside. We can then bring the device to the surface, open it, and quickly transfer the water to our labeled sample bottles and get it on ice as fast as possible. We need to get it on ice quickly because the microbes and phytoplankton in the water sample will continue to use the nutrients in the water unless we can slow down their metabolism by cold shocking them. A major challenge we have been experiencing with this device, however, is that the river and ocean currents we experience during sampling occasionally cause our water sampler to drift. This means that the exact depth of our sample may not be consistent and can lead to possible challenges when we need to interpret our nutrient data. After some searching, we learned that others don't seem to have this challenge or if they do, they aren't reporting. 

Kim had the great idea to attach weights to the LaMotte and we purchased two flag counterweights, which are 1lb waterproof bags that won't hang when we attach them to our water sampler. Earlier this week, Hannah and I tried attaching one with rope to the water sampler and we successfully took the device in the field and collected water. We did find that the counterweight was not exceptionally secure, but we did notice the whole process was easier and the device was vertical in the water. After thinking about how to improve our prototype, I got zip ties and fastened the counterweight to the LaMotte, which I hope keeps the counterweight more secure. I'm not sure if the 1lb weight is going to be enough weight, so I will likely be adding the other counterweight to make one heavy sampling device rather than two moderately heavy devices. This will reduce our sampling speed but our goal is to improve accuracy, which may come at the cost of speed. Our first true test with our new device will be in two weeks when we are in the field for our first summer field sampling session, and I'll let you know how it goes.

This week we were all busy bees in the lab and I realized that I've been moving so quickly that I forgot to write about what we are doing this summer. I noticed that a few weeks ago I said the next blog would be about summer and then I spent the following few blogs talking about other exciting events. So this week, I'm officially unveiling our big summer lab plans.

Our summer is packed full of research, hands-on experiences, collaborations, and new field work. I will be starting the summer off by supervising the bi-monthly water quality research, and Kim will be absent for this trip for the first time. I will be leading our two interns and Kim's graduate student, Hannah, as we collect our samples and filter them at the lab. This will be our interns' first research with us at the lab, and Hannah and I will be training them by going to the bayous at the lab and practicing as if we were on the boat. The week after our water quality field work, we will be collecting fish specimens along the Mississippi Coast for the gut content analysis work that our interns will focus on this summer. We will drive to multiple places and bring our target species back to the lab for future analysis. The interns will also work to quickly get our water quality filtration gear ready for the field again, as we will be leaving for a multi-day research cruise and we will be collecting and filtering additional water samples. I am the co-chief scientist on this cruise, so I will be teaching undergraduate students how to collect and process seawater for nutrient analysis and I will also be working with them on species identifications for fish and mud animals that we collect from various activities on our cruise. We will stop in Louisiana to pick up a group of day cruisers, including Kim, who will join us for a full day of research aboard the ship but who will not stay overnight.

We will also support a Louisiana teacher professional development workshop where K-12 teachers will learn about Neptune Pass, a new crevasse within the Mississippi River, and about the fish, shellfish, and flora that call the Mississippi River and coastal Louisiana their home. This is an exciting opportunity for me, because I get to bring both my science and education brains together to work with teachers on integrating local science into their classrooms. Kim and I enjoyed this opportunity last year where we worked with teachers in a Louisiana wetland and supported curriculum development and local ecology integration.

As the title suggests, I spent this week in Alabama for Gulf Con, which is the largest Gulf of Mexico conference that features scientific research, technological innovation, and education and community support across four days. The entire De Mutsert lab presented work at this conference and we got to hear about really awesome research done across the entire Gulf of Mexico. This was my first time at this conference, but I made some really valuable connections with other oyster scientists, environmental modelers, and field researchers. It turns out that our research team isn't the only one shocked by the lack of environmental data for the Mississippi Sound but we also aren't the only ones collecting these data. One of the conference highlights was connecting with two different research teams who are performing similar water quality monitoring in two different areas of our model area and who have agreed to share their data with our hydrodynamic modeling team.

I had the pleasure of hosting a session with Kim on impacts from acute, chronic, or multi-stressor effects on the Mississippi Sound and Bight, and enjoyed insightful talks across physics, chemistry, and biology. One item I really appreciated from our session was a well-respected senior scientist presenting on work that he hadn't considered important approximately a decade ago. He recently re-evaluated some conclusions he made from his earlier work and tested some of his assumptions and learned that perhaps he was hasty in his assumptions. I enjoyed hearing his honesty about his decisions and the new work that he presented is an important reminder that we can change our minds as scientists if we have new data to support a different hypothesis.

I also got the chance to reconnect with some colleagues and sat through 4 hours of microplastics talks, which included unique approaches to microplastic removal, detection, and good conversations around how we as a microplastic research community should move forward to create standardized sampling and analysis methods, a problem that is really apparent in microplastics research. While I didn't get a picture of the conference staff in the crayfish or starfish costumes, I'll instead share a nice picture my boss took while I was giving the fastest talk on my work, since she and I each had 7 minutes to present findings from two different projects.

I have spent most of this week working on manuscript edits, as my boss and I got our reviews back for a paper that we are hoping to publish in the coming months. These reviews, in particular, were really helpful in identifying areas that were unclear in the first draft, especially regarding technical details, local ecological and environmental factors, and some sampling methods. When you sit with and talk about research for so long, you forget that others don't have the same insights and you need reviewers to point out areas for improvement, so I am grateful for the scientists who gave their time to provide feedback.

I have also spent this week running through some final model tests for my side project: modeling how microplastics move through a Gulf of Mexico food web. This model is small with only 24 model groups, but represents some important species in the northern Gulf, both ecologically and commercially. I am evaluating how proposed policy may affect the transfer of microplastics in this food web by changing the amount of microplastics released through the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, one of my key model groups has not survived the initial test runs. First, Kim identified that there was a data input problem, where the fishing vessels were fishing using a > 500x effort multiplier which was killing lots of animals. After fixing that problem, however, the group was still crashing so I am starting to build the model from scratch in case there are residual calculations that I cannot delete from the model that may be affecting the runs. The microplastics, though, are nicely tracking through the system, so I am pleased that at least one aspect of this model is working as expected. I will have to hurry up and get this done, as I will be presenting this work in a little over a week, as soon as we are back from our upcoming conference (at which I'm presenting the unrelated manuscript work from paragraph 1).

Next week I will update you on the conference, which I'm sure will be a great time, as the entire lab is presenting research. I also realize that I have written many blogs that lack pictures, so my goal for all future blogs is to include a snapshot or a digital art piece that I create to keep the blogs fresh and exciting. Stay tuned!

We spent most of this week in the field to conduct our bimonthly (every two months) field work across the Mississippi Sound, the third of potentially seven trips. On today's trip we saw water spouts, seagulls argue over food, and a pelican who was eyeing the BlueBoat, as if to land on it while the boat was on its transect, all captured by our wonderful Science Communication and Outreach Coordinator, Megan. We are now about to send the BlueBoat back for what we expect to be its final updates: some handles for easier deployment and retrieval, additional holes to deploy the nitrate sensor lower in the water, a new mount for our incoming water quality sensor, bumpers to protect the boat's pontoons, and some protective coatings on existing hardware. We have been really pleased with how the boat traverses calm and choppy conditions and we can't wait to get the boat back with these final updates.

Unfortunately, I didn't get great pictures this week but I will share the lovely bridge shot that I took. Many of our transects follow bridges, because they make great straight lines for our BlueBoat to follow. This bridge is in southern Alabama, along a river that flows into Mobile Bay, and a key nutrient outlet for our colleagues' hydrodynamic model.

There will not be a blog next week, so stay tuned for the next post on April 30th about upcoming events at the lab and our summer plans.

This week I have been going across Mississippi for multiple events, including a county board presentation and press conference and to talk with students about our paid summer internship program at GCRL. Our Tipping Points report completed the review process and we presented this work to the Harrison County board of supervisors on Monday and then fielded questions from the press about this work. While the press did not ask either of the biologists on the project any questions, they were curious about what our results mean, how these results may be used in future management of the Bonnet Carre Spillway, and what's next for our research team. You can read one of the official press releases here on my research page, and I will add an additional link to the published report once we have it submitted to Aquila (the report within the press release is the actual and completed report). 

I also spent Wednesday at Jackson State University, where I spoke with some students who participated in our coastal experience trip about the paid summer internship that Kim and I are supervising in a few months. I got to talk with the students about my career path, how changing career directions can be fruitful, and how small opportunities and trying new things can lead to unexpected rewards. Their professor mentioned that next week, these students will work on polishing their CVs and personal statements before they apply to the internship program, and I am excited that so many of them seemed interested in spending a few months with us down on the coast to conduct field work in the Mississippi Sound. 

Next week I will be in the field for our lab's bi-monthly water quality sampling research. As of now, the weather looks great with temperatures in the low- to mid-70s and no rain, so let's hope it does not change. Stay tuned for next week's update on technical details related to this water quality research and hopefully some good new pictures from our time in the field.

This week, I had the privilege of serving on the science party to study how the sinking of the SS United States affects the environment just south of Destin, Florida. We set sail at 00:01 on Monday morning and returned at approximately 23:40 on Tuesday, an entire day earlier than expected. The seas were quite rough on the way out and many members of our science team, myself included, got sick in the morning of day 1, but we arrived on site and got to work collecting sediment and water samples. The sediments were sandy, not muddy, which made for challenging sample collection and processing steps. The coarse grain size means that the corer struggles to get deep into the sediment and the collected samples are difficult to get into the falcon tubes for storage. The Hamdan lab collects samples from the center of each core layer because the polycarbonate tube both smears the sample, which means microbes from other layers can end up in the sample layer and the tube contaminates the outer edge. The water quality collection and processing steps were far easier, albeit slow, as we passed 5 L of water through filters using a peristaltic pump and collected a few hundred mL for metals analysis.

Our team was comprised of three professors (one retired), two postdocs, one graduate student, one research technician, and six undergraduates. We worked two eight-hour shifts, though because of the arrival time to site and our departure time from site, I don't think anyone worked a full 16-hours. We got to work at sunset and sunrise (both during my shifts), sample with spotted dolphins swimming in the background, problem solve on site, identify small animals within the sediment cores, consume many energy drinks/coffees/sodas to keep spirits high, all while collecting data integral for understanding how shipwrecks influence the environment.

I couldn't pick a favorite picture this week, so I've attached a slideshow of some great shots taken by various members of the science party. If you are viewing on a mobile device, you may not be able to see all the photos.

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.

This week I spent more time working on my microplastics side project, but I am happy to report that I can soon talk about the Tipping Points project and its outcomes in more detail. We will be presenting this work to the local government in a few weeks and then, as far as I know, we will be uploading the completed report. Stay tuned.

​In the picture above you can see a really early example of tracing microplastics through a subcomponent of a northern Gulf of Mexico food web. You can see the groups in the food web in the top left, with groups 18-22 not visible, and I have the nematodes (1A, 1B, 2A) group plotted with their cumulative microplastic concentrations from the model start to end. In this example, you can see that as the simulation years increase, the cumulative microplastic concentration in these nematodes also increases, with variability and you'll notice that the rate of increase is large between 2000 and 2005 and then decreases from 2005 to 2020. This current model run is based on some potentially inaccurate numbers, though, because I still need to perform additional calculations. For example, the amount of microplastics I set to enter the system every year was based on the amount of microplastics found in Mississippi River water sampled at New Orleans, but I have based the environmental concentrations for the rest of this project on microplastics in the sediment. Therefore, I need to calculate the proportion of river microplastics that will sink to the seafloor, and how quickly that process will take so that I can adjust my initial concentrations. These concentrations are based on data from later than my model start, year so I want to calculate the expected concentrations for 2000 so that I am generating as realistic a model as possible. Additionally, I have to make adjustments to the model fit. That is, the current model has some irregularities as it runs from year to year, and irregularities in the predator-prey interactions will undoubtedly affect microplastic transfer between model groups.

Once I have smoothed out these current issues, I will move on to testing model scenarios. I will be adjusting the microplastic input rates-how many particles are entering the ocean and therefore sediments-to test how proposed and expected management scenarios may impact the concentrations of particles found within charismatic organisms, like blue crabs and Kemp's ridley sea turtles, but also less charismatic organisms, like nematodes and copepods. 

For all this and more, stay tuned. Be ready for two exciting blogs in these next two weeks as I have a cool research excursion on the horizon.

This past weekend, we had our amazing coastal experience trip. Fourteen students and three faculty joined me at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory for a weekend of hands-on research in coastal and marine science. This project, funded by the NASEM Gulf Research Program, aims to increase diversity in the coastal, marine, and geosciences workforce by providing hands-on research opportunities and paid internships to students from underrepresented backgrounds in these research areas. We partnered with two Mississippi HBCUs to accomplish this goal and to provide semi-local opportunities for these students that are closer than opportunities offered by our partners at Louisiana-based MissDelta institutions.

Our weekend consisted of a pre-field excursion learning and brainstorming session, a Blue Tech Field Day, a graduate and post-graduate student panel, and beach seining. For the pre-field excursion, I taught our students about the MissDelta Initiative and how changes along the Mississippi River will shape future changes in fish and shellfish communities in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The students brainstormed the types of data we should collect while in the field to help understand the local drivers of changes in marine communities, and they did a great job coming up with ideas without ever seeing the data collection technologies we'd use. We spent most of Saturday on the water collecting plankton samples, completing two otter trawls, performing sediment grabs, and collecting water quality data to inform our other sampling. I think the students were most excited about the dolphins that followed the boat and the dolphin that kept diving behind us while we were conducting an otter trawl; the dolphin likely ate well that day. The students also got the chance to use some marine technology and complete some seafloor mapping using remote controlled boats with ping sonars attached. After taking a long rest post-field day, we invited three speakers from USM to talk about how they got into grad school, their research and experiences, and how the post-undergraduate path is not necessarily linear. Our students got to ask questions and get some advice about next steps, which I think provided a nice activity after a long day in the field.

On Sunday, we took the students to the beach to conduct some seining to collect additional data on fish and invertebrate communities within the Mississippi Sound. My plan was to allow the students to fish for about an hour and then to return to the lab to analyze the data in an activity I created, but our students were having so much fun, that we let them fish for two hours. They seemed to enjoy competing with each other to see who could catch more fish, who could identify the most fish, and who was the best at pulling the seine net. The group I worked with really enjoyed when a juvenile blue crab grabbed onto my thumb and would not let go. For many of these students, it was their first time stepping into the ocean, and seeing their joy, smiles, and hearing them laugh and watching them get so hands-on with the fish and invertebrates brought the faculty members such happiness. Of course, I was too hands on throughout the entire weekend to get any decent pictures, though my colleagues got lots of photos that I am still waiting on. Instead, I will attach the picture of the anomaly our student captured in a sediment sample. We aren't 100% sure what this is, but he pulled up a surface sediment grab and there was a distinct color and texture difference between the silt, the clay, and this black substance. We contacted the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to report it, since it had characteristics of oil, and they may be looking into it further. The students were super excited, though, to see how all the faculty and our marine education staff members reacted to this unexpected component.
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My next step regarding our workforce development project is to visit JSU to talk about my science career and to announce, in detail, our summer program, where students can come work with Kim and I to build their hands-on research experience and collect samples and data to inform our northern Gulf of Mexico ecosystem model. We also will start planning another round of this coastal experience trip for this upcoming September or October, and I can't wait to bring another cohort of students to explore the wonders of our local marine communities.

I have spent this week preparing for--as the title suggests--our inaugural coastal experience trip. The coastal experience trip is a partnership between USM, Jackson State University, and Alcorn State University to provide hands-on field experience to undergraduate students from non-coastal facing universities. JSU and Alcorn are two Mississippi universities that are between three and four hours from the coast, so many of these students do not have the opportunity to conduct marine research or participate in coastal projects. Thanks to funding I received from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine's Gulf Research Program, I have designed a coastal experience trip that we are kicking off tomorrow, which will bring these students to do hands-on work aboard a research vessel and shoreside to increase participation and interest in marine and coastal sciences. Our activities range from collecting fish specimens and identifying them, hence this week's picture of one side of our field guide, collecting sediment samples, water quality samples with comparisons across different environments, beach sampling, and research talks from current USM graduate students and post-docs.

This may be the first time that some of our participants are stepping foot on a boat, touching a fish, getting in the ocean, and/or using some of the marine technologies we are bringing to collect data on this trip. While we recognize that we aren't able to conduct a full-scale research project in a few days, we are collecting some data on fish abundances and environmental quality at different sites which we can compare to previous collections and use for future coastal experience trips. We are also hoping to use this weekend to encourage students to consider graduate education or to consider joining a lab for undergraduate research opportunities. I will be going to JSU in a month to talk with the students more about getting involved in research and letting them know about paid research opportunities with us at USM this summer.

I think I am most looking forward to seeing these students interact with the samples we collect as they get to try out seine netting and get hands-on with fishes and invertebrates in the Mississippi Sound. Maybe we will see some dolphins or catch some skates, rays, or crabs, which are always a hit with students. Tune in next week for an update on how this experience went.

As the title suggests, there will not be a blog this week. However, stay tuned for some really exciting updates next week.

This week, I spent a lot of time working on a small side project where I am modeling how microplastics within the Mississippi Sound and Bight flow through the food web. The ecosystem modeling software that we use in the lab allows users to evaluate more than just predator-prey dynamics, and the Ecotracer module allows for tracking pollution through the modeled ecosystem. I originally wanted to incorporate this idea into my NSF postdoctoral fellowship, but that project did not get funded, so instead I am working on this as a side project. One challenge with this task, however, is that it requires a lot of data. I need to first build a food web with all the life history traits and diet compositions for the organisms, plus provide a time series of data for the biomasses of each model group. These steps are ones I've completed for our ongoing models but I have made this process more challenging by including groups that we don't already have in our Mississippi Sound and Bight model - notably, nematodes, benthic copepods, polychaetes, oligochaetes, and sea turtles. Then, I have to get data on microplastic contamination within the model groups and data on microplastic contamination within the water column and the sediment. This last piece is much easier than the faunal contamination data, since multiple groups have reported microplastic pollution transported by the Mississippi River, within the Mississippi Sound, Mobile Bay, and there are also a few sediment studies in the area.

This side project is combining my nematodes and microplastics work with my new modeling work so it is a fun challenge. I am hoping that through this project I learn about what data would be helpful for future researchers doing microplastic trophic transfer work and to see how this type of modeling may be useful for my own future career. I don't have any pictures of this work yet because I have spent my time finding data, entering numbers, and making spreadsheets, but stay tuned because I hope to have a balanced model soon and then I can start showing the next steps of this work.

This week, the lab spent three days at sea (at river/on river), as we conducted our second water quality sampling trip. This time, we brought the BlueBoat with its integrated power system and we successfully collected nitrate data from the boat without the nitrate sensor being attached to external power. Instead, our engineering team attached the nitrate sensor to the motherboard of the boat and used the boat's batteries to power the sensor. This meant that we could park our larger boat at the center of each water body, put the BlueBoat in the water, and let it pilot its path while we conducted the vertical profile and collected water samples. We did keep a close eye on the BlueBoat, though, as we saw heavy boating activity at some sample sights and we needed to avoid crab traps, large parked vessels, and [suspected] naval operations. 

Pictured is one of my favorite treks from our trip. Here, the BlueBoat is piloting across the East Pascagoula River in a portion of the waterway that has some major vessels docked on either side. We had to manually pilot the boat away from the vessels so that its horizontal path would not cause the BlueBoat to approach the vessels; it can be hard to discern what the boat is doing from afar and we did not want to worry the vessels or their captains/crew. While on this path, we got to see dolphins on the edges of this channel and a few pelicans were quite curious about our research. 

So what's next for the BlueBoat? Well, she now has all the major features we need but we are hoping to make small adjustments to her current build to improve her handling and safety. Specifically, we are aiming to make her easier to transport to and from the field and we expect to add a handle or a system that makes it easier to put the boat in the water and retrieve the boat from the water. My next step is to download all three sets of data--the nitrate data, the water quality sensor data, and the GPS data from the boat--and align the nitrate and water quality with exact coordinates along the BlueBoat flight paths, a task for next week. Stay tuned for more fun from the De Mutsert lab and our water quality sampling adventures.

This week was a quiet week at the lab with projects simmering in the background and our boat integration ongoing (finished by the time you read this). Today during an outreach event a student asked, "How can someone get involved in the environmental sciences?" and I thought that would be a great topic for this week's blog. 

There are two types of involvement in the environmental sciences, in my opinion. The first, is informal participation, where you enjoy the environment on your own or with a small group of people. This could involve going for a hike, foraging (with an expert), birding. Perhaps you make some crafts using recycled materials or items that would otherwise end up in landfills. Maybe you combine the two and do some research at a library and then make a craft or commit to a behavior that reduces your personal carbon footprint. These are all ways to informally participate in the environmental sciences and these ways allow you to be flexible with your commitment. They are easy to fit into your busy schedule and you can involve your friends and family in these endeavors.

The second type of involvement is formal participation, which I define as structured or organized events usually developed by non-profits, education groups, or environmental agencies. These formal events may range from workshops at zoos or aquariums to beach cleanups to supporting ongoing scientific research in the local community. Did you know that your community may be working with local scientists who are implementing their research ideas? Perhaps you live in a coastal area prone to flooding that may be working with scientists on nature based solutions or maybe a group of researchers are planning a project and want community input and local knowledge to inform their efforts. Of course, the most formal participation is pursuing a career in the environmental sciences, but that is not feasible for many people. However, if you are interested in some formal participation opportunities, National Geographic has an entire webpage about Citizen/Community Science Projects that provide links to help you get started with bird and butterfly census research, measuring night sky brightness, collecting weather data, and so much more. The link is here if you are interested in learning more or participating in these projects.

Next week is a busy week of field work with our newly integrated sensor system. I can't wait to show you how it looks and talk more about our water quality sampling efforts. Stay tuned.

This week, we have continued our preparations for our next water quality sampling trip. The sampling trip is part of a supplemental proposal that Kim, a number of our colleagues, and I got funded to collect water quality data from freshwater inlets across the Mississippi Sound and throughout the Mississippi River and Bird's Foot Delta in lower Louisiana. Our plan is to head to the field every two months to collect data at sites within Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and while our lab collects data at a few Louisiana sites, all of the Mississippi River samples are collected by a colleague at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Our first field trip in December was really a test of our proposed efforts. Was our sampling gear appropriate? Were the launch points correct? Can we do this research with only a few people in the field? We learned a lot from this initial trip and upon returning, we immediately made some adjustments which we will incorporate in a few weeks. 

Our newest task is to integrate our nitrate sensor onto the BlueBoat. The nitrate sensor requires a constant power source to collect data and unlike our water quality sensor, the nitrate sensor does not use a battery pack. Instead, we need to connect the sensor to external power, which we accomplished in December by connecting the sensor to a portable charger. This meant that we had the BlueBoat driving in front of us and we followed it while connected to the BlueBoat by the nitrate sensor's 25 meter cable. As you may imagine, however, this tethered system is quite cumbersome, as someone needs to maintain the cable while someone else is ready to manually control the BlueBoat if a problem arises, and possibly another team member to replace someone if they get tired. Instead what we are working on is creating an integrated power system so that the nitrate sensor draws power from within the BlueBoat and therefore is not tethered to the passenger boat. While a team member will still need to be ready with the manual controls if a problem arises, the integrated system will allow the passenger boat to travel to the midpoint of the BlueBoat's path and the team can conduct the vertical water quality profile while the BlueBoat is conducting the horizontal profile. Within the BlueBoat software, I can set a travel point if the boat loses connection with the computer, so we are going to test to see if the boat will travel to the midway point if we get too far away. If that is the case, then we may be able to set the BlueBoat to start its path and trek over to conduct the vertical profile even in our largest waterways, where the BlueBoat travels for nearly an hour to conduct its horizontal path.

We do go back in the field in just over a week, so I don't know how fast the integrated system will come together. Our backup is to use the same method from the December trip for this February trip and then get the integrated system completed by April. I'm hopeful, though, because our engineering team did a great job in designing systems to mount the sensors. Additionally, we will hopefully get some data from the vertical profiles soon so that we can address whether all the sites we are using are suitable for the work, whether we are perhaps sampling too many sites and can reduce our efforts (since some sites are different outlets of the same river), and so that our hydrodynamic modeling colleagues can start integrating these results into their work. 

I will hopefully bring back good pictures from the field this time so stay tuned for those!

This week at the lab, I have been focusing on the prospect of revisions, which we talked through today. After a researcher or research team submits their work to a journal or other publication source, other professionals in the field evaluate the writing and make comments and suggestions to improve the work and sometimes to point out concerns regarding methods, results, and even figures. For most review processes, the review occurs across multiple rounds. First, a journal editor evaluates the work to determine if it is suitable for the journal or if there are major surface-level issues. If the work passes this first round, the editor sends the paper to independent peer reviewers who spend a few weeks commenting on any aspect of the paper that draws their attention. Sometimes these comments are asks for the researchers to improve the clarity of the paper, sometimes the comments suggest a new way of analyzing the data, and sometimes the reviewers write comments that are not meant to reshape the writing (comments like, “I appreciate the way you explained [x]”). After the reviewers read the paper and write their comments, they make a recommendation about the status of the paper, which falls under the broad categories of ‘accept’, ‘revise’, or ‘reject’ and each broad category contains subcategories like major revisions or reject with possibility of resubmission. When the researchers receive the decision, they get to see all the comments and if they are revising the paper, they work to address each comment by making changes to the paper or by explaining to the reviewer and editor why they will not be modifying a section. The researchers will then send the paper back to the editor, the paper may go through another round of review and revisions, and so on until the paper is potentially accepted for publication.
 
This week, we started the process of revisions to our major report on the effects of historic Bonnet Carré Spillway operations on oyster biomass in the Mississippi Sound. This report is not a journal publication, but a scientific report, so our report goes directly to peer reviewers, rather than through an editor and then out for review. Our team sat down to discuss the reviewer comments and to determine which member was best suited to address which comments. Since the reviewers come from outside of our team and organization, their notes and feedback provide the musings of a researcher who is not innately familiar with the study system, the study design, and the thinking that went into creating this product. Therefore, the review provides guidance on which areas of the report we need to clarify and which items we can improve with additional figures or by modifying figures. We hope to complete these edits over the next few weeks and then send the report back for either additional feedback or approval.
 
I am excited to get this work ready for another submission, as this marks the end of my first big project at the lab. The oyster mortality project that I’ve written about previously came from this work but is an independent item (more updates soon), so finishing this report is a giant checkmark on my list of tasks. Finally, to get you excited for what my blogs will feature throughout this semester, I will be writing about: more water sampling trips in February and April, the workforce development project that I am leading in southern Mississippi, a teacher workshop featuring marine robotics, and a science conference at the very beginning of May to wrap up the semester. Stay tuned for more.

This week, I worked on initial results from one of our spatiotemporal models, which we are using to understand how Mississippi River management scenarios affect the health of fish, shellfish, and fisheries in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The results from these model runs come in multiple forms, including yearly biomass data, yearly fisheries landings data, some economic data regarding fisheries landings, and spatiotemporal distributions data. This last option, like a species distribution model, provides insight to how mobile species respond to changes in the environment and how sessile, non-mobile organisms respond in terms of biomass loss. While I cannot show results from this work since it is ongoing, I created a figure here using artificial values that helps explain how these models work and how we interpret the model results.










​From the model, we get a month by month distribution of organisms across the entire model domain, and the model gives us these distributions in a column and row format. From these column and row data, we can create a map of our model domain and plot the biomass of each individual across the entire geographic space. We can then follow a single species across the entire model run by plotting its biomass for every month and we can interpret month-to-month differences in the biomasses but also the locations of the biomass within the model. In the first panel here, model group A is only present in the upper left portion of the figure, which is Lake Borgne. In the second panel here, model group A has moved eastward and the individuals are no longer living within the lake. These distributional changes for mobile species indicate that something about the environment caused a fleeing response in the model group; perhaps the temperature in that area got too high, or the salinity dropped. A predator may have been successful in that original area or the model group may be following their own prey somewhere else. When we see distributional changes, we note which months these changes occurred between and then we can investigate what environmental factors changed during this time step. 

We can also create figures called difference plots, which frequently help us visualize the differences between the time steps. We subtract one plot from another to show shifts in distributions or loss of biomass, which can also identify model areas that became unsuitable to the model group during a time step. When researchers are using spatial models to evaluate differences between management scenarios, the researchers frequently use a baseline model or a model that evaluates a future without action and then compares scenarios to that baseline to show how much a management action improves the distribution or biomass of a key model group or how much a management action harms the model group. 

For this work, our next steps will be to investigate the key model groups and identify which time steps showed the largest differences between the different scenarios. Then, we will investigate which factors likely influenced the distributions and how ongoing Mississippi River management scenarios can shape the health of the fish, shellfish, and fisheries in the northern Gulf.