SoMAS undergraduate student Brittany Mauer
SBU Senior Brittany Mauer is double majoring in Chemistry and Marine Sciences. Last spring, as part of a Sea Semester at Wood’s Hole, she spent three months conducting oceanographic research while sailing from Tahiti to Hawaii aboard a 135 foot brigantine.
Aboard the Robert C. Seamans, Mauer and other students took classes and conducted multiple research projects. Every day they conducted Neuston tows to collect phytoplankton and zooplankton, as well as CTD and hydrocast deployments to measure physical parameters of sea water such as temperature and salinity. Brittany’s independent project was entitled “Phytoplankton production in surface and DCM waters of the Equatorial Pacific.”
“Being out at sea is amazing,” says Brittany. “There’s so much life out there. Sometimes at night, the boat would hit colonies of bioluminescent organisms, and there would be a bright green and blue glow all around the boat. And there were millions of stars.”
Brittany has been doing paleoceanography research in the lab of SoMAS professor Dr. David Black since her freshman year. She studies foraminifera. “The presence of different species in a sample can tell you the sea surface salinity at the time of the deposit, going back thousands of years,” she says.
Brittany plans to go to graduate school, possibly to study chemical oceanography, but she wants to take a year or two off after graduation to do more sailing.
“Ever since I was little, I’ve loved the ocean,” says Brittany. “After I took an oceanography class as a freshman, I immediately knew that’s what I wanted to do. It’s led me to some great experiences. I’ve seen some things I thought I’d never see.”
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