What's On the Docket for the Lab?

I thought I'd spend this week's blog talking about what is upcoming for and at the lab so that you have an idea of what to expect in the coming weeks and months.

September is our busiest month, as we have multiple excursions and events, plus weekend trips. Next week, Kim's diversity of fishes class takes to the field to explore the fish diversity in Biloxi Bay and on the barrier islands. We will conduct fish collections to evaluate the diversity and I will support the students in their efforts to identify fishes. The following week, I will bring a group of USM students to LUMCON for our Fall undergraduate excursion with the MissDelta Initiative. We will conduct fish sampling and water quality work to understand how our changing ecosystem is apparent across multiple levels of ecological analysis. The next week, I will be giving an invited research talk as part of the USM Division of Coastal Sciences seminar series and then the next day we have the GCRL Open House. The open house is free to the public, and we will have more information to share soon, with fun for the whole family.

October is a little quieter, but we will still be busy in the lab and in the field. We have our final water quality sampling trip at the end of the month and we are also hosting Kim's diversity of fishes class at GCRL to conduct a shark lab and to explore the fish collections. I have an event I am trying to plan for October, but I don't have more to share at this time, as the event is currently awaiting approvals. The lab will also be working throughout October to prepare for upcoming conferences and presentations.

In November, the lab will attend two conferences during the same week. Kim will head to Curacao for the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute Conference, while Hannah and I head to Louisiana for the Gulf Estuarine Research Society Conference. While I'd love to go to Curacao, my research is not as nested in the fisheries space as Kim's, so I will stay stateside and represent the lab at our biennial GERS conference, where I hope to present some of my newest microplastics research. I am also hoping to have some protocols and methods written for our BlueBoat, since future research endeavors may use her in the field and I may not be around for all those trips and events.

By December, I will be hopefully wrapping up the first year of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation's inaugural Mentorship Program and putting final touches on one or two manuscripts. I guarantee that more items will pop up between now and December but nothing major is on my radar for that far in advance. 

Exciting events are on the horizon, as you can tell, so stay tuned for all these adventures and more.