Biology and Marine Biology

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jellyfish blooms and effects on biogeogechemical cycles and socioeconomics. (see ‘Funding

and Proposals’). Primary duties:

o Coordinated five workshops at NCEAS

o Led two major papers analyzing the paradigm of global jellyfish blooms (BioScience

and PNAS) and co-authored five additional manuscripts

o Hosted/participated in two public outreach events in Santa Barbara and Madrid,

Spain

o Conducting International Jellyfish Art contest resulting in the preparation of a

coffee-table style book comparing science with artwork (see publications)

o Constructed the Jellyfish Database Initiative (JEDI) with over 500,000 records

o Interviews for global media agencies.

- Trophic BATS – Co-PI of a NSF collaborative project examining the role of zooplankton as

mediators of carbon export and planktonic food web processes across different mesoscale

eddies. Conducted four cruises over the past two years in the vicinity of the Bermuda

Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site in the Sargasso Sea where grazing by crustacean

and gelatinous zooplankton were quantified across production gradients and related to the

biological pump.

Deepwater Horizon and Global Oil Spill Research:

- Fisheries Oceanography of Coastal Alabama (FOCAL) program – Monthly monitoring

of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in northern Gulf of Mexico waters. Primary duties:

o Coordinated water quality and nutrient component of FOCAL measuring: stable

(13C and^15 N) and radio (^14 C) isotopes, inorganic nutrients, zooplankton, microbial

production and respiration, chlorophyll, flow cytometry, nutrients, particulate and

dissolved organic carbon, chromophoric dissolved organic matter spectra, methane,

oxygen, CTD profiles, and hydrocarbon analysis of oil and zooplankton.

o Disseminated results of monitoring through daily reports to funding agencies and

stakeholders, presentations at conferences and writing publications on the oil spill

effects on food web processes.

- Metabolism of oil by plankton communities – Lead PI on a collaborative project

examining the effects of dispersed oil on carbon pathways in pelagic food webs, microbial

metabolism (e.g., ‘priming effect’ research) and zooplankton production. Primary duties:

o Management of two large-scale, multidisciplinary mesocosm experiments involving

co-PIs, postdocs, graduate students, research technicians and interns

o Conducted independent and collaborative research on effects of dispersed oil on

community metabolism and ecosystem resilience

- Effects of dispersants on Sargassum mats – Conducted three mesocosm experiments with

DISL colleagues examining effects of dispersed oil on removal of essential fish habitat in

the Gulf of Mexico, specifically measuring sinking of Sargassum mats caused by reduced

oxygen diffusion. This work will be submitted to Science as a brevia article.

- Global oil spill database – constructed a database of global oil spills with over 8,000

records for the past century to be made publically available in 2013. Global analysis of oil

spills being conducted (manuscript in preparation) as a means of assessing oil as an

anthropogenic stressor on coastal and open-ocean systems by comparing oil carbon to

primary production, riverine carbon inputs and volatile organic fluxes on a global scale.

- NCEAS ecotoxicology oil group – active participant in the global oil working group

that was established to examine environmental and management issues surrounding the

Deepwater Horizon incident and to provide policy documents for future deep water vs.