MSRC STUDENT AWARDED SEA GRANT CONGRESSIONAL INTERNSHIP
An MSRC student Katherine Minsch, has been selected as one of ten 1984. Sea Grant Congressional Interns, the first from New York State in the six years the internship program has been operating. Ms. Minsch was chosen from a highly competitive pool of applicants, who were recommended by their faculty, screened by the Sea Grant Institutions and recommended to the National Office for final selection.
The Sea Grant Internship program provides a unique educational opportunity and experience for graduate students with an academic interest in marine resources and in the policy decisions affecting those resources. The program allows highly motivated and qualified graduate students to match themselves with “hosts” on Capitol Hill or in the Executive Branch. The one year assignment contributes to the educational experience of the interns by exposing them to and involving them in the marine policy decision-making process at the Federal level.
Ms. Minisch came to MSRC in 1980 with considerable experience in environmental studies. She studied at the Habitat Institute of Environmental Studies in Massachusetts, graduated Southampton College with a B. S magna cum laude in Marine Biology, was awarded a traineeship at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and was a Research Technician with the Occupational Studies Group (UNC). During her stay at the Center she has worked on projects at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Long Island Regional Planning Board. She is currently finishing work on her masters thesis at MSRC, “Management criteria for the subaqueous burial of dredged sediment.” Her advisor is Professor Henry Bokuniewicz. During her internship Ms. Minisch is on the staff of the House Subcommittee on Oceanography of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee.
OKUBO AND SCRANTON RECEIVE DISTINGUISHED TEACHING AWARDS
Professors Akira Okubo and Mary Scranton were selected by the Center’s graduate students as the recipients of the MSRC Associates Distinguished Teaching Award. Dr. Okubo, who received his Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University, teaches Introduction to Mathematics for Marine Sciences, Mathematical Marine Ecology and, with Professor Carter, Oceanic Diffusion. Dr. Scranton, who received her Ph.D. from MIT teaches the core course Chemical Oceanography, and with Professor Cochran, Topics in Marine Geochemistry.
Dr. Okubo is using mathematical models to study and describe zooplankton swarming and fish schools. Dr. Scranton is Studying the biological processes controlling hydrogen distribution in the World Ocean. She and her students presently are working on the anaerobic cycling of hydrogen in freshwater and marine sediments. She is also working on the interactions among facultative anaerobic bacteria, Nitrogen fixation and Hidrogen production in the open ocean with Dr. John Schwarz, a scientist at the Texas A&M University and Dr. Mary Silver of University of California at Santa Cruz.
STEINBERG – SQUIRES AWARD WINNER
The Steinberg-Squires Award, which honors the best graduate thesis produced in an academic year, was presented to Jonathan Kramer for his MS thesis , “Seasonal Aspects of Carbon Metabolism in Fucus vesiculosus.” Fucus vesiculosus is a seaweed, colloquially known as rockweed, which can serve as a model for studying closely related kelp species. Kelp is important in mariculture and as a potential energy source. Mr. Kramer received a certificate and a S200 check. His name was engraved on a plaque that is displayed permanently in the Center’s conference room.
Criteria for selection of the award winner include both originality and importance of the thesis, as well as clarity of writing and the degree of independence shown by the student. The award was established in 1980 through a donation to the Stony Brook Foundation by Donald F. Squires, Director of New York Sea Grant Institute and former Director of the Marine Sciences Research Center, and his wife Marian Steinberg.
STONY BROOK FOUNDATION AWARDS DINNER RECOGNIZES MSRC
Achievements of the Marine Sciences Research Center as it celebrates its 16th birthday at the State University of New York at Stony Brook were recognized at the tenth annual Distinguished Contributions to High Education Awards Dinner of the Stony Brook Foundation.
The $135 a plate event, held on March 24, honored Admiral Hyman Rickover, known as the father of the atomic submarine, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author William W. Warner
The dinner recognized the rapid development of Stony Brook’s Marine Sciences Research Center as one of the nation’s leading oceanographic institutions. The Center has grown since 1968 from a small organized research unit into a comprehensive coastal oceanographic research center with a staff of approximately 100 and an annual budget of nearly $4 million, serving the entire 64 campus SUNY system. The Center now has programs leading to the degrees of master of science and doctor of philosophy which enroll more than 100 students from around the world.
Admiral Rickover, who celebrated his 84th birthday on January 27, directed construction of the Nautilus, the first atomic submarine, in the early fifties. He most recently became the second American in history to be honored with a second Congressional Gold Medal and has received numerous awards for his work advancing American nuclear technological capacity including the Distinguished Service Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
William Warner won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his book entitled “Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay,” about the life cycle of the blue crab and the people who earn their living from harvesting the blue crab. His most recent book “Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic Fishermen was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The dinner-dance is a major annual fundraising event which, Since its inception in 1974, has raised substantial funds for new academic programs, scholarships and assistance to students and other academic and community endeavors. With an attendance of approximately 550, this year’s dinner raised more money for the Foundation than any in previous years.
MSRC graduate student Lisa Campbell was selected as the recipient of the first Stony Brook Foundation Scholarship. The Scholarship carries with it a S10,000 stipend and makes Ms. Campbell eligible in the future for selection to the Stony Brook Foundation’s Society of Scholars. Ms. Campbell is completing her doctoral dissertation under Professor Edward J. Carpenter on Serotypic Differentiation of Coccoid Cyanobacteria by Immunofluorescence. Not very much is known yet about these bacteria which are abundant in the world’s oceans. Ms. Campbell’s research will help to identify different species.
FOCUS ON RESEARCH
J.L. McHUGH – RESEARCH PROFILE
J.L. McHugh has been interested in fishery management most of his life. In fact, he’s just written a book. On the subject, Fishery Management, a book which may well become a Standard textbook in the field. And, with good reason, for Professor McHugh has been intimately involved with fisheries from the beginning of his career, ever since he was first employed by the Fisheries Research Board of Canada in 1929.
Since those early years Professor McHugh, who has directed and overseen the management of fisheries at both the state and the federal level has discovered that the study and management of fisheries is broader than biology, that fishery management is not merely or even primarily an oceanographic science. “I learned how important the social sciences are in fisheries when I was at the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory (now the Virginia Institute for Marine Science) and became convinced that economics, law engineering, as well as the Social sciences, play an equal part with biology in deciding how fisheries are managed. In fact, often some of these other disciplines play a leading role, and biology takes a back seat.”
Professor McHugh did research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California while working toward his Ph.D. at UCLA. He received the Ph.D. in 1950 with a thesis on a study of the populations of Pacific northern anchovy.
From 1951 to 1959 Professor McHugh was Director of the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory where he was introduced to oyster biology and also became interested in menhaden. In 1959, as head of the Division of Biological Research in the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Dr. McHugh was in charge of 20 laboratories around the coasts of the United States and was active in several International Fisheries Commissions either as Commissioner or Adviser to the Commissioners. He also served on a number of other bodies during that period, some domestic and some international. Dr. McHugh was promoted to Assistant Director for Biological Research in 1963, to Deputy Director of the Bureau in 1966, and in 1968 became Director of the Office of Marine Resources in the Department of the Interior, with responsibility for coordinating Oceanographic research in all Bureaus.
Early in 1970 Professor McHugh took a temporary position with the National Science Foundation in Washington where he headed the Office for the International Decade of Ocean Exploration, which had just been established, and guided it during its formative months. In August 1970, J. L. McHugh became Professor of Marine Resources in the Marine Sciences Research Center of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He remains active here as Professor Emeritus.
“My interest has been in Fishery Management almost from the beginning,” says Professor McHugh. The individual states are responsible for fishery management up to 3 miles out from the shore, the federal government from 3 miles to the 200 miles limit of the nation’s waters. Professor McHugh points out some of the complications in this. “On the West Coast, fishery management is more developed. There may be as many problems, but those which do arise are somewhat easier to solve. I think the fact that there are only 4 states–in contrast to the il 4 states on the Atlantic Coast–ea se s the difficulty in resolving conflicts among competing states’ interests. However, with the development of better state-federal relations, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has proven more effective in recent years.”
Professor McHugh’s main emphasis in his work at MSRC has been on broadening the approach to Fisheries Management. In 1971 he spent time at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The report he prepared there, “Domestic Wrangles and International Tangles–The Fisheries of the Middle Atlantic Bight,” has been the basis for much of his recent work. His forthcoming book on fishery management approaches the subject broadly through a number of case histories, studying the diversity of factors which enter into the resolution of fishery management problems.
Whales may not be fishes, but the management of their harvesting is of vital interest to a marine biologist like Professor McHugh. Professor McHugh served on the International Whaling Commission from 1961 to 1972 as Commissioner (1965-1972) and Chairman of the Commission (1971-1972). His most recent manuscript, Whales and Men, is a study of whales, of man’s harvesting policies and practices, and of their interrelation. As a friend of the whale, Professor McHugh cautions against a protectionism which advocates the complete cessation of all whaling. He points out that it is a position which, he in refusing to establish guidelines for harvesting of whales, might well breed anarchy in whaling. “It is our responsibility to prevent the indiscriminate harvesting of whales. There will always be whaling, I believe it is naive to think we can prevent that.”
GLENN LOPEZ – RESEARCH PROFILE
When Glenn Lopez says he’s interested in food, he’s not thinking of gastronomy, but of the feeding strategies of marine animals. Professor Lopez is concerned specifically with the range of adaptations to “making a living” by animals in the soft bottom substrate, muds, rather than by those in a hard substate, such as coral. He has concentrated primarily on molluscs (gastropods and bivalves). Given the availability of microorganisms as food, is there a strategy to explain how the animals select their food and how efficiently they assimilate it? What are the morphological as well as the behavioral adaptations?
One problem with this kind of research is how to measure selectivity strategies and absorption efficiencies in animals which are only 2 mm in size. For Dr. Lopez there had to be a better way than dissection or gut content level analyses. The solution was to label the food in sediment with radioisotopes, which included labelling the detritus with ¹⁴C formaldehyde. The latter enables one to measure the absorption efficiency of organic material.
These techniques of labelling are new developments which Dr. Lopez has contributed to the marine sciences. As is often the case in science, he encountered the formaldehyde technique in a rather unexpected way. He had started the radiotracing experiments while teaching at Odense, Denmark, but it wasn’t until he was teaching at the University of North Carolina that he really developed the technique. A biochemist, named Miles Crenshaw of the dental school at the University of North Carolina, was using “C formaldehyde to label collagen (rather than buying the more costly “C collagen). Dr. Lopez saw the potential usefulness of this technique in the marine sciences. With the addition of a saturated salt solution which is used as a poisoned control in biogeochemical studies, he found that ¹⁴C formaldehyde effectively labelled organic detritus in sediment.
Dr. Lopez began his work in marine benthic ecology in Professor Iver Duedall ‘s lab at the Marine Sciences Research Center (MSRC) while working on his dissertation in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr. Duedall is now Professor and Chair of the Department of Oceanography and Ocean Engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology. Dr. Lopez received his Ph.D. in 1976 with a dissertation entitled The role of Orchestia grillus (Talitridae, Amphipoda) in the decomposition of Spartina alterniflora litter. He then spent several years doing research and teaching in Denmark (Aarhus & Odense) and Germany (Bremerhaven, Institut für Meeresforschung), where he began working with sedimentary systems and molluscs. He was appointed Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina in 1978 and came to the Marine Sciences Research Center as Assistant Professor in 1980.
Professor Lopez will be travelling to Finland and Denmark this summer where he will be studying bivalves in freshwater muds. Professor Lopez’s main interest is in comparing the feeding habits of animals in marine and freshwater muds. “I want to have the animals tell us their strategies,” says Dr. Lopez. “One of the implications of what they tell us concerns how global our theories actually are. Ecologically, they may be quite specific. I want to see just what the scope of these theories is.”
In addition to his lab work in radio tracing and labelling, Dr. Lopez is involved in aquaculture field work in Long Island Sound with researchers from MSRC, Yale University and Wesleyan University. He is also beginning to study the feeding behavior of animals in the field using long-distance microscopy to observe how animals behave in the intertidal mudflats at the MSRC Flax Pond.
Awards
HANS DAM GUEPRERO received a Sigma Xi award for research about fine-scaled zooplankton patchiness in the Long Island Sound.
PEOPLE AND MEETINGS
M.J. BOWMAN attended 11th annual Middle Atlantic Bight physical oceanography and meteorology workshop, 19-20 October 1983 at Lanont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Palisades, NY.
WILLIAM PETERSON and some of his Students presented papers at the 7th Biennial international Estuarine Research Conference (ERF) at Virginia Beach, Virginia on 23-26 Oct. 1983. PETERSON presented “Temporal-spatial relationships along tidal mixing, seasonal stratification and phyto-zooplankton dynamics in Long Island Sound, New York.” and also convened the Finfish, Shellfish and Fisheries Session. All abstracts published in Estuaries Vol. 6, No. 3.
SETH AUSUBEL, and WILLIAM T. PETERSON presented a paper entitled “Analysis of selective feeding by the larvae of Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus).
At ERF DOREEN M. MONTELEONE’s paper was entitled “Feeding ecology of sand lance, Ammodytes sp., larvae” and KIM McKOWN’s was “Growth and feeding of the sand lance (Ammodytes americanus) in Coastal Waters.
Also at ERF were MALCOLM BOWMAN and KIRK COCHRAN. Professor BOWMAN convened a session on tidal mixing and plankton dynamics and presented a paper “Phytoplankton patch generation via Eckman pumping over shoals on the continental shelf.” Professor COCHRAN also presented a paper at ERF.
J. KIRK COCHRAN presented a paper at the annual meeting of Saudia Laboratories’ High Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Program in Denver, CO, 27-28 October 1983.
Professor AKIRA OKUBO was a visiting scientist at the Visiting Scientist Lecture Series at Texas A&M University November 14 to 16, 1983. Professor OKUBO presented results of his current research on mathematical models of swarm maintenance for insects, zooplankton and fish. He also presented the Physical Oceanography Seminar on the topic of Lagrangian diffusion equation and its application to oceanic diffusion problems.
KIRK COCHRAN presented a paper at The American Geophysical Union fall annual meeting 5-9 December 1983 in San Francisco.
SCOTT SIDDALL is the new NAS Newsletter Editor. The NAS Newsletter office is now housed here at MSRC.
MALCOLM BOWMAN and R. WILSON visited Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) , Patricia Bay, Vancouver Island, Canada, 3-5 January 1984, to discuss ongoing and planned joint research programs at IOS. Professor BOWMAN also visited Dept. of Oceanography at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 5 January 1984.
At the Ocean Sciences meeting in New Orleans, 23-27 January 1984, Professor AKIRA OKUBO delivered an invited paper, “Mathematical models for zooplankton swarms: their formation and maintenance” at the session of Plankton Spatial Pattern
Ph.D. graduate S. M. CHISWELL accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Rhode Island with Dr. R. Wattes working on equatorial ocean circulation deduced from inverted echo sounding techniques.
CHIH-SHIN SHIEH presented a paper entitled, “Stabilizing sewage sludge using fly ash; physical and chemical properties of the optimum mix in seawater,” at the 56th annual meeting of the New York Water Pollution Control Association, Inc., January 17, 1984.
On 26 January 1984 at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT., Dr. DAVID CONOVER presented an invited seminar to the ecology section of the biology department concerning the influence of temperature on sex ratios in fishes.
LISA CAMPBELL presented a paper at the AGU/ASLO meeting in New Orleans, 22-27 January 1984.
MARY SCRANTON and PAUL NOVELLI presented papers at the 1984 AGU/ASLO meeting in New Orleans.
On 3 February 1984 Dr. DAVID CONOVER presented an invited paper on the status of New York’s marine finfish populations at the New York chapter of the American Fisheries Society meeting in Rome, NY.
MARY SCRANTON presented a paper entitled “Hydrogen concentrations and cycling in anoxic marine environments” at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Research Conference on the Geochemistry of Natural Gases in San Antonio, Texas on 14 February 1984.
LISA CAMPBELL was invited to give a seminar at the Horn Point Environmental Laboratories in Maryland on 23 March 1984.
CURRENT RESEARCH
MARY SCRANTON and PAUL NOVELLI participated in a cruise of the R/V Wecoma off Baja California during November and December 1983. Hydrogen distributions were studied in both the water column and sediments.
In January, DR. SUSAN WILLIAMS and SETH YARISH spent 2 weeks studying nitrogen diagenesis in coral reef sediments in St. Croix U.S. Virgin Islands at West Indies Laboratory, of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teague Bay.
LISA CAMPBELL, participated in a 12-day cruise on the R/V Atlantis II. Roger Flood, from Lamont-Doherty Geological Laboratory, was chief scientist. CAMPBELL investigated growth rates of cyanobacteria at a station in the Sargasso Sea.
J.L. McHUGH is completing a book developed from his lecture notes called Fishery Management to be published by Springer-Verlag, New York. Professor McHUGH has just completed a research project on the inshore catch of food fishes in the Raritan Bay area which will be published by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
JAMES KIRBY has been awarded a subcontract to a grant to the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Delaware, from the Office of Naval Research, Coastal Sciences Program. The purpose of the Studi is to investigate means for Inc delling the propagation of surface waves in regions characterized by abrupt changes in water depth and ambient current. Professor Robert A. Dalrymple (U. of Delaware) is principle investigator for the one year project.
P.K. WEYL, TOM. GULBRANSEN and JOHN EBERHARDT are working on projects to develop information systems, one for the Port of New Orleans, another for the Port of New York.
PUBLICATIONS
COBB, J. S. , T. GULBRANSEN, D. WANG, SYSTO 1983. Behavior and distribution of larval and early juvenile Homanis americanus. Can. J. Fish. & Aquat. Sci. , 40: 2184-2188.
FELDMAN, GENE. 1983. Satellite Observations of the eastern equatorial Pacific. Tropical Ocean Atmosphere Newsletter 20:5-6.
GERARD, V.A. and H. KIRKMAN. 1984. Ecological observations on a branched loose-lying form of Macrocystis pyrifera (L.) C . Agardh in New Zealand.” Botanica Marina.
LUNDY, PAUL, CHARLES F. WURSTER and R. GEORGE ROWLAND. 1984. A two-species marine algal bioassay for detecting aquatic toxicity of chemical pollutants. Water Research 18:187-194.
McHUGH, J. L. 1983. An Overview of the hard clam resource. In : Proceedings of a Management Perspective on the Hard Clara Resource in Great South Bay Stuart C. Buckner (ed.). Town of Islip, 10 March 1983 : 3-9.
OKUBO. A., C. C. EBBESMEYER and B. G. SANDERSON. 1983. Lagrangian diffusion equation and its application to Oceanic dispersion. J. Oceanogr. Soc. Japan 39 (5): 259-266.
PETERSON, WILLIAM T. and SETH. J. AUSUBEL. 1984. Diets and selective feeding by Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) larvae on zooplankton in Long Island Sound. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. (in press).
