TRIENNIAL REPORT 2018-2019
Making Scientific Research Count at Stony Brook University!
News and Research Highlights
Research is fundamental to the SoMAS mission. The research conducted at SoMAS seeks to understand the way the marine, atmospheric and terrestrial environments function, as well as the effects and impacts of human interactions with these systems. These problems all require knowledge from multiple disciplines and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences encourages interdisciplinary research. Many of our faculty pursue research in collaboration with scientists at other University departments as well as with scientists from academic institutions around the country and the globe. Unlike many academic institutions, we do not have traditional departments at SoMAS. What we do have is a large number of faculty and students who work together to better understand our planet.
All SoMAS faculty are expected to maintain an on-going research program that meets the highest standards of scientific inquiry and to regularly publish the results of their work in refereed scientific journals and other outlets. Research at SoMAS is generally carried out by a team headed by a faculty member that includes his/her graduate students, often aided by one or more undergraduate students. Some of the larger projects employ full- or part-time research technicians and/or postdoctoral associates.
Research at SoMAS is externally-funded. Our faculty have a well-deserved reputation for success in securing grants and contracts from a wide variety of sponsors at the federal, state, and local levels. Among the most frequent and important sponsors of research at SoMAS are several U.S. federal agencies: National Science Foundation (NSF); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); Department of Energy (DOE); Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
The following pages contain brief synopses of research projects underway at SoMAS that are representative of the breadth and diversity of research at the School. More complete information on SoMAS research is available on the “Research” pages of our web site, as well as under the profiles of individual faculty members
Wayne Penello ’79 Talks Risk Management
From Wayne Penello ’79 Talks Risk Management on Stony Brook Matters, by Kristen Brennan, on November 18, 2020.
Wayne Penello ’79 is not afraid to take risks. In fact, he’s built a career out of it.
As president and founder of Risked Revenue Energy Associates, Penello helps companies understand the importance of risk management. Now, he’s sharing his 40 years of experience in Risk is an Asset — a book he penned alongside his colleague Andrew Furman that has been published by Forbes Books.
But Penello wasn’t always in risk management. With a master’s degree in Marine Sciences from Stony Brook University, he began his career as a research scientist. Somewhat unexpectedly, Penello told us, it’s his research training and his experience at Stony Brook — that led to his success in business. Penello even dedicated his book to his professors at Stony Brook, acknowledging their role in his career.
Tell us more about your journey from Stony Brook University to your role as president of Risked Revenue Energy Associates and now author?
As a businessperson specializing in commodity price risk management, I’ve had the privilege of working on a vast range of complex problems. The education I received at SBU helped me develop a foundation of skills that eventually led to my understanding of statistics and chaotic systems.
My late advisor, Bud Brinkhuis, was a researcher and professor who made every effort to broaden my analytical and communication skills. His influence and support gave me the confidence to approach and obtain the training I needed from several other excellent scientists, both on campus and elsewhere. As a graduate student, I conducted experiments and studied at Cornell’s Veterinary College, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook’s medical school. I also was part of a research team of marine scientists that took samples across the Caribbean Sea. Bud was my advocate through everything. The breadth of experiences offered by Bud and the other scientists and the access each of them afforded to me played an important role in opening my eyes to my own potential and accelerating my growth.
It sounds like your experience as a student had a profound impact on your career. Can you tell us more about that?
While I was a student, something magical happened. I took a statistics course that was then called Biometry, which introduced me to Analysis of Variance. At the time, it was a relatively new statistical tool and had only just become popular because computing costs had come way down. This course was my epiphany. I loved the course.
Back then, most students would sit for hours at the Computer Center punching cards that would program the computer to solve their homework problems. My challenge was that the Marine Science Research Center was on the South Campus, and the Computer Center was on the Main Campus. The bus ride between the two could easily take 45 minutes each way. I needed a more efficient way to get my work done.
Using my Texas Instrument TI-100, a hand-held calculator with 99 programmable steps, I broke the programs for each statistical test into a series of subroutines, each small enough to fit on the calculator. This allowed me to solve these problems in my South Campus office, saving me a lot of time. More importantly, by delving deeply into the math for analysis of variances, I developed an appreciation for the logic behind the tool. I was so excited about my new knowledge that even before the course was over, I started looking for ways to apply my new skills everywhere. I was fortunate to publish research papers with several scientists and professors who used these tools to further their research. These collaborations gave me the confidence to look beyond the opportunities at Marine Sciences.
What inspired you to take the leap and write Risk is an Asset?
I want businesses subject to commodity price risk to become resilient by maintaining appropriate levels of protection. When a company fails, it affects many people. Investors lose money, but employees lose their jobs and sometimes their retirement savings. My hope is that if managers have a better understanding of their risk, they will appreciate the benefits of process risk management and adopt it. Rather than focusing on math, my book explains its application and the utility of risking budgetary performance estimates. I wrote the book in a way that makes it approachable for students, in the hope that they will read and learn from it. These students will be the next generation of business leaders; hopefully, this book will help them prepare for many challenges.
With your degree in marine sciences, you began your career as a research scientist. How does this factor into the work you do today?
One of the great dangers in today’s world is that disinformation is continually being circulated and re-circulated. One publisher will print a knowingly false statement, only to retract it the next day. Unfortunately, before that happens, other news publishers will regurgitate that information as if it were true. This creates a long trail of referenced information that is wrong. Today, we must all challenge and check facts. My training as a research scientist helped me develop into a critical thinker and prepared me for today’s challenge of sifting through multiple and independent sources of information to find the data I can trust.
What advice would you give to students looking to follow in your footsteps?
If you’d like to make a lot of money, solve BIG problems. The bigger the problems you solve, the more likely you are to get paid well. But you also need to be good at solving these problems, so pick something that interests you. I have been fortunate to have loved going to work every day of my life. That allowed me to live a life filled with passion. If you can, make your avocation your vocation. Then you will love your work and have a good chance to become great at it. If there is someone out there who is doing the things you are interested in and good at it, go work for them. Surround yourself with excellence if you want to become an expert. As they say here in Texas, the fruit never falls far from the tree.
So, what’s next for you?
My current focus is to develop a suite of tools that individual investors can use to manage their investments more wisely. The challenge is to make these simple enough for everyone to use yet powerful enough to give them confidence that they will be better off if they proactively manage their investment portfolios.
Giving Day 2020: Stony Brook Strong by the Thousands
Photo above: the Summer Oceanography class from 2018
From Giving Day 2020: Stony Brook Strong by the Thousands on Stony Brook University News, October 16, 2020.
Stony Brook community surpasses Giving Day goal, donating more than $300,000 to 90-plus initiatives across the University
In the span of just 24 hours on October 8, Seawolves came forward in droves to support the areas on campus that matter most to them, from student emergency funds and scholarships to Stony Brook athletics and interdisciplinary research initiatives.
Alumni led the way in donations, making more than 40 percent of the 2,680 gifts to the fundraising drive. Other donors included faculty and staff, friends, students, parents and grateful patients.
It’s inspiring to see the Stony Brook community come together in this remarkable way,” said Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis. “Even in the midst of exceedingly challenging times, a record number of people stepped up to show their support for Stony Brook and, really, for one another. We’re grateful to everyone who gave so generously. Once again, I’m incredibly proud to call myself a Seawolf.
Donors came from across New York, as well as 41 other states and seven countries. While over $300,000 was raised during Giving Day, the average gift was $97, demonstrating the collective impact that thousands of donors can have on areas across the University.
In the spirit of going far beyond, alumni, friends and faculty created 21 matching gift challenges and 57 donor participation challenges, generating tens of thousands of dollars in additional gifts.
Paul Muite, executive director of annual giving, announced that all gifts received before midnight on October 16 will be counted toward Giving Day. “The response to Giving Day was so remarkable this year. We want to keep that momentum going and make sure everyone has a chance to take part and show the world just how Stony Brook Strong we are.”
As of Monday, October 19. 2020, gifts toward the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences raised $11,065. The SoMAS Total Immersion Scholarship raised $4,005, including a $2,900 matching gift challenge from alum Dr. Alexander Kolker. The Bay Scallop Bowl raised $735. And the Center for Clean Water Technology raised $6,325, which includes a $1,000 matching gift challenge from Dr. Chris Gobler, and a $2,500 from The Susan Haig, DMA Matching Gift Challenge.
Please visit the Giving Day crowdfunding page to make a gift.
SoMAS Faculty Unfolding the Secrets of Ice Formation to Better Understand Climate
From Unfolding the Secrets of Ice Formation to Better Understand Climate on Stony Brook University News, August 8, 2020.
STONY BROOK, NY, August 7, 2020 – Ice crystal formation plays a crucial role in precipitation formation and alters the radiative properties of clouds, thereby affecting Earth’s climate system. In recent years there has been tremendous progress in understanding how liquid-phase droplets are formed (nucleation), yet the nucleation of ice crystals has remained elusive. That’s why Daniel Knopf, PhD, Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University, is studying the nucleation of ice crystals with the goal to improve current cloud and climate modeling approaches. The research is supported by a three-year $710,000 grant from the Department of Energy that starts September 15, 2020.
An aerosol sampling stack and inlet tubes at the DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Site in Oklahoma for studying ice formation from aerosol particles.
“Ice formation is considered one of the remaining grand challenges in the atmospheric sciences,” says Professor Knopf. “The objective of the project is to gain a predictive understanding of the chain that leads from aerosols to ice-nucleating particles to ice crystal number concentrations in clouds.”
He hopes the results of the project will guide concrete improvements in the current cloud and climate modeling approaches to ice formation by advancing understanding of the coupling between detailed aerosol physicochemical properties and in-cloud ice crystal number concentrations. This understanding would ultimately result in better predictions of the climatic impact of ice crystal containing clouds.
The grant (DE-SC0021034) is part of a group of national awards under the DOE’s Atmospheric System Research program.
Magnified ice crystal formed from an aerosol particle.
SoMAS Alum Celebrates Release of First Book
Laurie Zaleski has found a way to communicate her science to new audiences and published her first book. A graduate from the lab of Dr. Roger Flood, she earned her M.S. degree from the Marine Sciences Research Center (now SoMAS) at Stony Brook University in 2002.
Author and alum Laurie Zaleski (MS, 2002)
A Young Person’s Field Guide to Finding Lost Shipwrecks is Laurie’s autobiographical account of an actual nautical archaeological expedition. The book is written from the surveyor’s point of view and explains the math and science behind multibeam sonars and how to use the technology to find shipwreck. Along the way she describes the equipment used to explore the seafloor. The reader is taken through a typical day at sea on a marine research vessel equipped with a multibeam sonar and ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) on a real-life expedition in search of a shipwreck. The story begins alongside a dock in Cadiz, Spain with a team that includes Laurie, three archaeologists, two college students on a summer internship, three captains, one cook, one engineer, two SCUBA divers and one able-bodied seaman onboard the Hercules, a 37 meter research vessel and are in the midst of getting ready to set sail in search of the Santisima.
Readers will learn a lot more than science in this true-life account of a scientific expedition. They will learn history, eat tapas, and dance the flamenco all while in search of a 300-year-old shipwreck. Introducing Multibeam and Acoustic Reflectivity to children – What could be better? And women scientists! Yeah!
She says she wrote A Young Person’s Field Guide to Finding Lost Shipwrecks “because of my love of science,” and “moreover my love of my 12-year-old granddaughter and the essential need for all children, especially girls, to keep their sense of adventure firmly intact as well as to find a connection to themselves through math and science.”
Thanks to her time at SoMAS launching her into her career, Laurie has been fortunate to have travelled the world–from the Arctic Circle to Saipan and all points in between conducting geophysical surveys. She has mapped thousands of kilometers by plane, boat and foot. She fondly remembers her time at Stony Brook as a turning point in her life. She had donated a copy of the book to SoMAS as a way to inspire the next generation of brilliant young oceanographers!
The book is available on Amazon in Kindle and Hardcover.
Zaleski, L.A. (2020). A Young Person’s Field Guide to Finding Lost Shipwrecks: The Search for the Santisima. Austin Macauley Publishers.
SoMAS MCP Program Prepares Grad for Influencer Role
Photo above: Alan Alda, center, with Rachael Coccia, left, and her graduate advisor Kate Fullam.
From Master’s Program Prepares Grad for Influencer Role by Glenn Jochum on Stony Brook University News, May 27, 2020.
Helping to clear our shores of unsightly and dangerous plastics is both a mission and a great job for Rachael Coccia ’17, who earned a master’s degree in the Marine Conservation and Policy (MCP) program at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS).
“I was looking for a unique program that would allow me to specialize in communicating about marine conservation topics to bridge the gap among scientists, policymakers and the public,” Coccia said. “The one-year program offered that flexibility.”
Coccia, a resident of San Diego, California, described her time at Stony Brook as “pivotal,” helping her get to where she is today: plastic pollution manager at the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit environmental organization that works to protect the world’s oceans and beaches.
In her position, Coccia directs the nationwide Ocean Friendly Restaurants and Beach Cleanup programs from the foundation’s headquarters in San Clemente, California.
Coccia credits her time working as a graduate assistant at the University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science for the development of important skills that she would use in her career.
While there she managed The Flame Challenge, an international competition that challenges scientists to explain complex science concepts in ways that are understandable to an 11-year-old. In that role, she reviewed hundreds of entries from scientists explaining energy to kids.
“Having the chance to work alongside Alan Alda was incredible,” said Coccia. “He’s very involved with the Center and in particular, The Flame Challenge.”
She also enjoyed several courses offered at the Alda Center, including Improv for Scientists.
“This class was very eye-opening as I watched scientists from many different disciplines come together to explore their science and learn techniques to better communicate about what they do,” she said.
Another highlight: taking a video production class at the Alda Center in which she documented a trawl survey and developed a video featuring the work of the Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program.
“We pulled up some incredible specimens, including some adorable puffer fish,” she said.
Rachael Coccia
Coccia’s knowledge of things pelagic came easily to her, even though she grew up in landlocked Rochester, New York. That’s because she was always enamored of the outdoors, spending hours running through the woods and playing in a creek. Later on, she became a lifeguard and competed on her high school’s swim team, earning her the nickname “Fish.”
Her most cherished outings, however, were to the beaches of the East Coast. “I would play in the water for hours on end, search for critters under the rocks and dive down to the ocean floor to enjoy the relative peace beneath the waves,” she recalled.
It was through the MCP program that Coccia connected with the Eastern Long Island chapter of Surfrider.
“That introduced me to the Ocean Friendly Restaurants program,” she said. “I was able to visit restaurants to discuss the program with them, learn of the obstacles they would face and come up with solutions.”
That experience proved vital to her current role as the program’s national director.
The path to Surfrider was a circuitous one, but a bit of luck mixed with persistence landed her a dream job.
Coccia first applied for the position of plastic pollution manager soon after graduating from Stony Brook. She made it to the final round in the interview process but ultimately did not get the job because there were more qualified applicants, she was told.
“It’s a very competitive field to find jobs in because these are the jobs that will ultimately save our planet,” Coccia explained.
So she interviewed for a number of related positions online before changing her approach and getting the experience she needed.
Her new strategy was to set up face-to-face chats with local organizations, which led to her taking a part-time position with The Ocean Project, the global coordinator for World Oceans Day. A full-time position became available in 2018.
As the director of youth initiatives overseeing the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council, Coccia was able to work remotely before moving across the country to San Diego. Nearly a year after she moved, she saw another posting for the plastic pollution manager position at Surfrider. She interviewed for it this time in person — and landed the job.
Before she enrolled at Stony Brook, Coccia earned a bachelor’s degree in public relations at Fredonia State University, and hosted an associate-produced 40 episodes of the Aqua Kids TV Series, an Emmy award-winning K–12 program that educates young people about ecology, wildlife, science and how it relates to them.
That experience reinforced her commitment to communicating about the crisis caused by plastic pollution — and the outrage she felt learning about the mistreatment of the ocean. The images of marine life tangled in plastic seared into her brain during an undergraduate environmental science class.
Today, she consults with the inaugural Surfrider Club Leadership Council to encourage more involvement and integration with its 100-plus student clubs across the nation.
“The solutions already exist — it’s just a matter of scaling them up and implementing them on a larger scale,” Coccia said.
She said there are approximately 630 Ocean Friendly Restaurants across the country that have committed to using reusables only for on-site dining, avoiding plastic bags and straws, and instituting other plastic-free policies.
Coccia said some people avoid single-use plastics by arming themselves with reusable alternatives, from cups and bags to straws and containers. For those looking to remove all single-use plastics from their lives, there are DIY hackathons that offer instruction on how to make soap, toothpaste, cleaners and more in reusable containers.
“The problem is that it shouldn’t be up to individuals. The plastics industry and larger corporations that profit from plastic put us in this mess, and they should be held responsible to help us out,” Coccia said. “When we can hold them accountable through policies like extended producer responsibility, that’s when we’ll truly be able to leave our toxic addiction to plastic in the past.”
#SeawolvesForLife
SoMAS Grad Student Selected for Competitive Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship
From SBU Grad Student Selected for Competitive Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship on Stony Brook News, December 17, 2019.
Irvin Huang, a PhD candidate in the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, has been chosen as a fellow in the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship program, which matches highly qualified graduate students with “hosts” in the legislative branch, executive branch, or appropriate associations/institutions located in the Washington, DC area, for a one-year paid fellowship. The program is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.
Huang is on the executive path and is slated to work in non-legislative offices in Washington, DC, beginning in February 2020. At Stony Brook he works in the Aquatic Toxicology Lab of Professor Anne McElroy, where he uses molecular biology to understand the impacts of pollutants on fish health and survival.
“I’m very excited and honored to have been selected for the Knauss Fellowship,” said Huang. “While I admit that policy was not my original goal when I started graduate school, I’ve since realized the vast potential that public and environmental policy has for creating science for the people. My life goal has always been to use science to help improve society, and I’m confident that I can do that by bringing my scientific training into a policy setting through the Knauss Fellowship. I’m excited to learn how to develop policy that is informed by the most recent research, which will hopefully be broadly applied to help the most people possible.”
For more details about the program, visit the National Sea Grant College Program’s website at www.seagrant.noaa.gov/Knauss.
Substantial Natural History Collection Gifted to SoMAS
Photo above: the Research Vessel Seawolf conducting a cruise on the Hudson River.
From Extraordinary Collection of Marine Specimens and Data Donated to University on SBU News, December 6, 2019
Gift provides a windfall of unpublished biological and water quality data for 43 years of Hudson River sampling, including preserved specimens.
An extraordinary scientific collection of fish specimens, as well archived fish and water quality data taken from the Hudson River over more than five decades, has been donated to Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS).
What is now known as the Hudson River Collection (the Collection), donated to the university by the integrated energy company, Entergy Corporation (Entergy), began in the 1960’s as “one of the most ambitious environmental research and assessment programs ever performed” on an iconic River that was a focal point for the nascent U.S. environmental movement. As it grew, the Collection became unique, variously referred to as “probably the best dataset on the planet,” “unequalled globally in its duration and its spatiotemporal frequency” and “extraordinarily important, because it provides a retrospective and unbroken view of the ecological health of the estuary over time.”
The Long River Beach Seine survey, begun in 1974, is among many unique scientific samplings represented in the Hudson River Collection.
The Collection includes Indian Point-sponsored, digitized survey data for the full complement of fish species (approximately 170) available to the sampling gear in the approximately 150-mile Hudson River Estuary (from the Battery to the Troy Dam), and the associated water quality and Indian Point-specific biological information. The Collection also includes the associated archived fish specimens, consisting mostly of preserved early life stages of Estuarine fish, numbering approximately 50 million individuals. The database is unequalled, and the specimens from the Collection represent among the largest held by any U.S. museum or university, placing Stony Brook among a handful of renowned institutions, such as the Smithsonian.
Entergy also has made a substantial donation of seed capital to advance Stony Brook’s goal of groundbreaking scientific study related to the Collection – study that dovetails with SoMAS’s expertise on coastal, marine, estuarine ecosystems, including biodiversity, population genetics, climate change and disease. The Collection’s digitized databases make them readily usable “big data,” susceptible to the cutting-edge statistical methods and advanced computing on which Stony Brook excels.
“This donation positions Stony Brook as a leader in developing innovative forms of multidisciplinary science endeavors,” said Michael A. Bernstein, Interim President of Stony Brook University. “I am confident that our unparalleled access to the Hudson River Collection will result in extraordinary research opportunities.”
Representative species collected and studied.
“We want to thank the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and leading scientists for supporting us in our search for the right home for the Collection,” said Mike Twomey, Senior Vice President, Federal Policy, Regulatory and Government Affairs for Entergy. “SoMAS and Stony Brook are the right home for an unparalleled Collection, one that we could not be more pleased to give.”
Paul Shepson, Dean of SoMAS, echoed those thanks, underscoring that the Collection will not only advance SoMAS’s standing as a leading research and educational institution, but enable scientists and their students to better understand a wide range of subjects, beginning with the environmental drivers within the Hudson River ecosystem and aquatic ecosystems in general.
“The Collection’s data and samples will enable leading scientists to develop collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects, leading to new discoveries that will be instrumental in understanding changes in estuarine and marine environments both locally and worldwide,” said Shepson. “We are both excited and grateful to Entergy for entrusting Stony Brook with such an incredible and unprecedented collection.”
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About Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University, widely regarded as a SUNY flagship, is going beyond the expectations of what today’s public universities can accomplish. Since its founding in 1957, this young university has grown to become one of only four University Center campuses in the State University of New York (SUNY) system with over 26,000 students, more than 2,700 faculty members and 18 NCAA Division I athletic programs. Our faculty have earned numerous prestigious awards, including the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Indianapolis Prize for animal conservation, Abel Prize and the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. The University offers students an elite education with an outstanding return on investment: U.S. News & World Report ranks Stony Brook among the top 40 public universities in the nation. Its membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU) places Stony Brook among the top 62 research institutions in North America. As part of the management team of Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University joins a prestigious group of universities that have a role in running federal R&D labs. Stony Brook University fuels Long island’s economic growth. Its impact on the Long Island economy amounts to $7.38 billion in increased output. Our state, country and world demand ambitious ideas, imaginative solutions and exceptional leadership to forge a better future for all. The students, alumni, researchers and faculty of Stony Brook University are prepared to meet this challenge.
About SoMAS
SoMAS is the State University of New York’s designated center for marine sciences and a leader in marine, atmospheric and sustainability research, education, and public service. Currently, there are more than 500 undergraduate and graduate students and 90 faculty and staff from 16 different nations working together to better understand how our marine, terrestrial, and atmospheric environments function, are related to one another and how they and their associated living resources may be sustained for future generations. Research at SoMAS explores solutions to a variety of issues facing the world today ranging from local problems affecting the area around Long Island to processes that are impacting the entire globe.
About Entergy Corporation
Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including 9,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.9 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of $11 billion and approximately 13,500 employees. Additional information is available at entergy.com.
High-Tech Instruments at SoMAS Empower the Search for Microplastics
From High-Tech Instruments Empower the Search for Microplastics by Glenn Jochum on Stony Brook News, November 1, 2019
It’s an invisible problem on a global scale.
Drinking straws, shopping bags and other plastic litter contaminating our beaches and oceans are easy to see, but true microplastics – particles ranging in size from 5 millimeters to those too tiny for the unaided human eye to perceive – are entering the food chain, potentially causing damage to marine animals and human bodies.
That’s why researchers in Gordon Taylor’s lab at Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) are searching for these unseen ocean contaminants with the help of two high-powered instruments.
SoMAS’ microplastics research team selecting field samples to be analyzed on the laser Raman microspectrophotometer (pictured in the background) which is housed in the NAno Raman Molecular Imaging Laboratory. (L-R) Professor Gordon T. Taylor (PI), Ms. Tatiana Zaliznyak (research support specialist), and Mr. Luis Medina Faull (Ph.D. student).
Students and research associates are using a laser Raman microspectrophotometer to help them explore the chemical composition of microplastics that pose a global threat to marine environments, and an atomic force microscope that can image molecules and the tiniest of organisms.
“To the best of my knowledge, we are the only environmental or marine science lab in the United States to have such capable instruments, aside from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts,” said Taylor, a Professor of Oceanography at SoMAS and Director of the NAno-Raman Molecular Imaging Laboratory (NARMIL).
In simplified terms, the microspectrophotometer is a laser-based device that measures the colors of light scattered from sample materials and provides chemical information. The Raman instrument is capable of focusing a laser beam down to a third of a micrometer, which is 200 times less than the width of a human hair.
The atomic force microscope is capable of resolution down to a tenth of the width of a single DNA molecule, which enables visualization of proteins and the surface of cells and viruses.
With these tools, Taylor said, researchers can produce three-dimensional chemical maps; software then reconstructs the images in a process similar to how medical tomography interprets a CT scan.
As technology evolves, Taylor emphasized, researchers increasingly require significant funding to invest in the equipment necessary for meaningful results. “Basic research involves constant auditioning to get money,” he said.
Taylor’s Ph.D. student, Luis Medina, is studying samples taken from New York Harbor out into the Atlantic, off the Long Island coast, as well as in the Arctic, Antarctic, Caribbean Sea and the coast of Mexico. Medina has also been working on a National Geographic grant investigating microplastics in the coastal waters of his native Venezuela with help from research support specialist Tatiana Zaliznyak. Their work is in its early stages.
“For my research, I am very fortunate to have access to a confocal Raman microspectrophotometer,” Medina said. “This technology is unmatched for exploring small-scale interactions among microplastics, microorganisms and the environment. Understanding these interactions is fundamental to addressing unanswered questions about effects of microplastics pollution in our oceans.”
According to Taylor, the jury is out on whether or not ingesting microplastics poses a serious health risk. The concern is that microplastics can potentially concentrate other contaminants such as dangerous hydrocarbons, pesticides, and PCBs, which are known to be absorbed by plastics.
Renishaw inVia Confocal Raman Microscope (CRM)
“We know that many types of marine animals concentrate plastic contaminants from their environment,” he said. “Microplastics can act as vehicles for harmful chemicals to move up the food chain. The technology being developed in NARMIL will provide a means to improve our understanding of microplastics behavior in the ocean.”
“As an analytical and environmental chemist, I am delighted to see this very clever combination of Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy applied to the pursuit of a significant contemporary environmental problem, said SoMAS Dean Paul Shepson.
“Professor Taylor’s group is leading the world toward a better understanding of human impacts on the Earth’s oceans,” Shepson said.
New Study Reveals Important yet Unprotected Global Ocean Areas
From New Study Reveals Important yet Unprotected Global Ocean Areas on Stony Brook News, October 25, 2019.
The published findings may guide policymakers to increase MPAs
STONY BROOK, NY, October 25, 2019 — The largest synthesis of important marine areas conducted to date reveals that a large portion of earth’s oceans are considered important and are good candidates for protection. A first of its kind, the study was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers including Ellen Pikitch, PhD, and Christine Santora of Stony Brook University and Dr. Natasha Gownaris, a PhD graduate of Stony Brook University. The team examined 10 diverse and internationally recognized maps depicting global marine priority areas. The findings, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, may serve as a roadmap for the goal set by the United Nations to create 10 percent of the ocean as marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2020.
There are numerous ongoing United Nations and nongovernmental initiatives to map globally important marine areas. Such areas may be identified because of their high biodiversity, threatened or vulnerable species, or relatively natural state. Criteria used for mapping vary by initiative, resulting in differences in areas identified as important. This paper is the first to overlay mapping initiatives, quantify consensus, and conduct gap analyses at the global scale.
The analysis found that 55% of the ocean has been identified as important by at least one of the mapping initiatives (58% of this area is within national jurisdiction and 42% is in the high seas). More than 14% of the ocean was identified as important by between two and four maps, and a gap analysis showed that nearly 90% of this area is currently unprotected. The largest of these important but unprotected areas were located in the Caribbean Sea, Madagascar and the southern tip of Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Coral Triangle region. Nearly all area identified by five or more maps is already protected as reported by the World Database on Protected Areas. Most (three quarters) nations protect less than 10 percent of the identified priority areas within their exclusive economic zones (EEZs).
“An enormous area of the ocean has already been identified as important by scientists and conservationists but remains unprotected,” said Pikitch, Endowed Professor of Ocean Conservation Science in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University. “Opportunities for further ocean conservation are widespread and include areas within the national jurisdictions of most coastal states as well as the high seas.”
This map depicts areas of the ocean globally deemed important by 1 (lightest green) and 7 (darkest green).
Based on the team’s analysis of the 10 maps, Pikitch explained that the goal to protect 10 percent of the oceans by 2020 could be met solely through the actions of coastal states. If all the unprotected ocean area identified as important by two or more initiatives were to be protected by 2020, an additional 9.34 percent of the ocean would be added to the global MPA network.
In addition, more than 76 million km2 of areas beyond national jurisdictions were identified as important and unprotected. This finding, she added, may therefore inform ongoing discussions about protection of the high seas.
The investigators also used biogeographic classification to determine whether current protection of important areas was ecologically representative. They found it was not, as only half of all 99 ocean provinces protect at least 10 percent of their identified area. This, they point out, suggests the need for improvement in creating an ecologically representative global MPA network.
“This study can help guide placement of future MPAs to meet agreed objectives for the quantity, quality and representativeness of the global network of marine protected areas,” Pikitch emphasized. “Local studies and expertise will also be necessary to implement this process.”
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About Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University, widely regarded as a SUNY flagship, is going beyond the expectations of what today’s public universities can accomplish. Since its founding in 1957, this young university has grown to become one of only four University Center campuses in the State University of New York (SUNY) system with over 26,000 students, more than 2,700 faculty members and 18 NCAA Division I athletic programs. Our faculty have earned numerous prestigious awards, including the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Indianapolis Prize for animal conservation, Abel Prize and the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. The University offers students an elite education with an outstanding return on investment: U.S.News & World Report ranks Stony Brook among the top 40 public universities in the nation. Its membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU) places Stony Brook among the top 62 research institutions in North America. As part of the management team of Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University joins a prestigious group of universities that have a role in running federal R&D labs. Stony Brook University fuels Long island’s economic growth. Its impact on the Long island economy amounts to $7.38 billion in increased output. Our state, country and world demand ambitious ideas, imaginative solutions and exceptional leadership to forge a better future for all. The students, alumni, researchers and faculty of Stony Brook University are prepared to meet this challenge.
Additional Coverage
Times Beacon Record: SBU’s Ellen Pikitch reveals ways countries can meet ocean saving target
Hakai Magazine: Where Should the World Focus Its Ocean Conservation Efforts?
WSHU: By Mapping Oceans, Scientists Identify Areas Most In Need Of Protection
Laura Klahre ’97 Defends Long Island’s Native Pollinators
Bee rancher Laura Klahre sits by her mason bee cottages at Blossom Meadow Farm in Southold. Photo by Randee Daddona
From Laura Klahre ’97 Defends Long Island’s Native Pollinators on Stony Brook Matters by Kristen Temkin Brennan
Laura Klahre ’97 speaks for the bees.
As a bee rancher and the owner of Blossom Meadow Farm on the North Fork of Long Island, no one understands the importance of pollinators more than Klahre. That’s why she works hard to educate the public on creating friendly environments for bees.
But not all bees are created equal. While recent headlines have drawn attention to honey bees, the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences alumna is working hard to shift attention to Long Island’s native pollinators, including mason bees and bumblebees, both of which pollinate two to three times better than the invasive honey bee.
As a School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences graduate, you began your career as an oceanographer. What inspired your career change to bee rancher and berry farmer?
Life is definitely a meandering path but the leap from oceanography to farming is not as gigantic as one would think. Similar ecological principles for healthy ecosystems apply on land and underwater. For example, biodiversity is critical for a stable ecosystem when dealing with the fisheries in the Atlantic, the resiliency of a coral reef, and even for a self-sustaining farm. To this end, we maintain a tract of grassland and natural areas for native pollinators to live, follow organic growing principles, ensure multiple flower species are blooming throughout the growing season, turn off the lights at night (moths pollinate), and no longer keep honey bee hives.
You’re currently working to ban honey bee hives from protected lands. Can you tell us more about why this is such an important initiative? How are honey bees impacting our ecosystem?
Declining honey bee populations have gripped the headlines and unfortunately spurred many land managers to allow hives on protected lands. Receiving a fraction of the media attention, native bee populations have been hit even harder and are ecologically more important. A multitude of papers have shown that honey bees outcompete native bees for food, change the ecosystem by preferentially pollinating invasive weeds, and can transmit pathogens and parasites to native bee species. Honey bee hives should be banned from parklands and open space in order to protect resident native bee populations and overall ecosystem health.
In a similar vein, sustainability programs should not teach beekeeping. In light of the most recent research findings, beekeeping should only be taught as part of an agricultural program. Honey bees should be seen as livestock and appropriate to pollinate large scale, single crop agriculture where pesticides are heavily relied upon, there is little to no natural habitat set aside and pollinator availability is a problem.
You mentioned the importance of learning about sustainability practices. How has Stony Brook prepared you for your work today?
Before my first day of graduate school, I had never been to Long Island. Yes, I grew up on the shore of New Jersey and had been to New York City several times, but never to Long Island. Once you find your groove, it is a fascinating place! Although close to an urban center, nature still abounds and the North Fork of eastern Long Island still has strong agricultural underpinnings. Sustainable agricultural practices are critical for nutritious crops, bountiful yields, and for a healthy environment.
My graduate years at Stony Brook University were hard, but the research and classes prepared me for this path forward. I love reading journal articles about native pollinators (Dr. John Ascher and Dr. Bryan Danforth are two of my favorites) and figuring out how to take the science and bring it into practice. For example, deformed and misshapen fruit likely results from a pollination problem. Native bees, like mason bees and bumblebees, pollinate 2-3 times better than the non-native invasive honey bee. Science has shown that more complete pollination of a flower results in heavier, higher quality fruit and thus a higher crop yield per acre. We started ranching mason bees on our farm years ago and now over 150 people have started with mason bees through us (one can sign up for our newsletter through blossommeadow.com). Although I kept honey bees since the late 1990’s, those hives are now gone.
Tell us more about your work at Blossom Meadow Farm.
We are a small farm in Southold, NY focused on growing premium berries, making great jam, and raising mason bees. We are particularly well known for our award-winning red raspberry and strawberry jams. We don’t use commercial pectin to make jam. Instead, the jam is thickened by allowing the fruit to slowly reduce, coaxing out the fruit’s vibrant flavors and natural pectin.
Our tagline is Eat Jam, Save Nature. Jam sales support the farm as well as our side conservation initiatives with monarch butterflies, nocturnal pollinators, and now carbon sequestration efforts by growing and planting oak trees.
What does a typical day look like for you?
My husband, Adam Suprenant, is a winemaker, and together we co-own the winery Coffee Pot Cellars (named for the Orient Point Lighthouse, which sailors call the “Coffee Pot”). Blossom Meadow Farm shares retail space with the Coffee Pot Cellars Tasting Room in Cutchogue. A typical day during the warm months entails picking fruit in my pajamas while listening to an audiobook. At 11 am, my black pug Beasley and I zoom down the road about three miles to open up the tasting room. We pour wine and talk conservation all day and then head back to the farm at 6 pm to pick more fruit until dark. We are closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so that I can make jam.
How about a typical day off?
With the farm in full production, there really is no day off but I love what we do. One of the clear benefits to living on Long Island though is that there is always a beach within bicycling distance to take a quick dip.
In your 2015 TED Talk, you spoke about the critical role that bees play in food production. What is one thing you wish everyone knew about native pollinators?
Planting bee-friendly plants adds color to your landscape AND helps reconnect Long Island’s fragmented natural areas to form larger more diverse ecosystems. Planting bee-friendly plants, shrubs, and trees creates a vibrant wildlife corridor for bees, butterflies, birds, and other creatures. Instead of driving somewhere to see nature, you can bring nature to your doorstep.
For more information on bee-friendly plants, Laura Klahre and Blossom Meadow Farm, please visit blossommeadow.com or follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
Learn more about how Stony Brook is building a bee-friendly campus.
Koppelman Documentary Premiere
Photo above: Documentary film creators Anna Smith and Megan Gallagher with Dr. Lee Koppelman
SoMAS undergraduate students Megan Gallagher, an Environmental Humanities Major with a Biology Minor, and Anna Smith, an Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Major with an Environmental Humanities minor premiered their documentary about Long Island Urban Planner and Stony Brook University Professor Emeritus Lee Koppelman on Friday September 20, 2019 in Endeavour Hall Room 120. As previously noted, Dr. Koppelman “played an immense role in balancing planned growth and environmental preservation in one of the fastest growing regions in the United States” as director of the Suffolk County Planning Department for 28 years (1960-1988) and the Nassau-Suffolk County Regional Planning Board executive director for 41 years (1965-2006).
Dean Paul Shepson was the emcee for the evening, welcoming a full house to the event, including family and friends of Dr. Koppelman, Brookhaven Town Councilwoman Valerie M. Cartright, and Muriel Weyl, widow to SoMAS professor Peter Weyl. After Dean Shepson introduced student mentors Dr. David Taylor, faculty advisor of Environmental Humanities, and Mark Lang, Senior Systems Engineer at SoMAS, Anna and Megan introduced their film. The documentary focuses on Dr. Koppelman’s legacy on Long Island, tying together the history of expansion on post-war Long Island with Dr. Koppelman’s efforts at preservation. The interviews with Dr. Larry Swanson, Dr. Tara Rider, Dr. Dewitt Davies, and Richard Murdocco connect the story to educational mission of Stony Brook University.
The film is available to view on YouTube and Facebook.
After the premiere of the film, SoMAS Dean Shepson conducted a Question and Answer panel with the creators of the film, Megan Gallagher and Anna Smith, along with their mentors Dr. David Taylor and Mark Lang, and all the “stars” of the film: Dr. Lee Koppelman, Dr. Tara Rider, Dr. Larry Swanson, Dr. Dewitt Davies and Richard Murdocco. Video from the event is available on YouTube.
Photos from the Premiere taken by Maria Brown are available on Google Photos.
Related articles:
SoMAS Researcher Investigates New Modeling Technology to Assess Climate Change Impact on Winter Storms
Photo above: Image of a bomb cyclone that brought heavy snow and strong winds to the U.S. East coast during January 2018. Professor Chang’s research will explore how these cyclones and their impact will change in a warming world. Credit: NOAA
From Researcher Investigates New Modeling Technology to Assess Climate Change Impact on Winter Storms on Stony Brook News, October 3, 2019
STONY BROOK, NY, October 3, 2019 — Winter storms result in substantial loss of life and property. Scientists are investigating how these extreme winter weather events that cause damage are influenced by climate change.
Edmund KM Chang, PhD, a Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University, has received a two-year $200,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections program (NOAA/MAPP) to look more closely at the interactions between diabatic heating and storm dynamics to assess how warming temperatures will impact major snowstorms and winter floods.
Recent studies have suggested that previous versions of Global Climate Models (GCMs) may not have sufficient resolution to correctly simulate the interactions between diabatic heating and storm dynamics, potentially under-estimating the intensity of these storms in future projections.
Professor Chang says his project will study these storms using, for the first time, multi-model ensemble projections that have resolution high enough to define and better simulate these interactions. He contends the results of the research will provide better understanding on how these hazards will change in the future.
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About Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University is going beyond the expectations of what today’s public universities can accomplish. Since its founding in 1957, this young university has grown to become a flagship as one of only four University Center campuses in the State University of New York (SUNY) system with more than 26,000 students and 2,600 faculty members, and 18 NCAA Division I athletic programs. Our faculty have earned numerous prestigious awards, including the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Indianapolis Prize for animal conservation, Abel Prize and the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. The University offers students an elite education with an outstanding return on investment: U.S. News & World Report ranks Stony Brook among the top 50 public universities in the nation. Its membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU) places Stony Brook among the top 62 research institutions in North America. As part of the management team of Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University joins a prestigious group of universities that have a role in running federal R&D labs. Stony Brook University is a driving force in the region’s economy, generating nearly 60,000 jobs and an annual economic impact of more than $4.6 billion. Our state, country and world demand ambitious ideas, imaginative solutions and exceptional leadership to forge a better future for all. The students, alumni, researchers and faculty of Stony Brook University are prepared to meet this challenge.
About the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) is a leader in marine, atmospheric and sustainability research; education; public service; and is SUNY’s designated center for the marine sciences. The School is among the leading oceanography and atmospheric sciences institutions in the world, providing students with access to state-of-the-art research laboratories, shipboard experiences, high-powered radar and computing facilities. SoMAS provides expanded study opportunities in the fields of ocean conservation, climate change and extreme weather, sustainability, waste management, marine fisheries and resources, and many others.
Stony Brook Celebrates as Ashley Schiff Preserve Turns 50
From Stony Brook Celebrates as Ashley Schiff Preserve Turns 50 on Stony Brook News on October 3, 2019 by Glenn Jochum
Some students know it as a scenic shortcut from the Main Campus to South Campus and back. Others use it as a “living laboratory” to study its geographical features and learn about its rich plant and animal life. For the whole community, it’s a place of enduring natural beauty.
The 26-acre Ashley Schiff Preserve turns 50 this year. This week Stony Brook will pay tribute to its past and underscore its importance for future generations.
The preserve was created by the University’s first president, John Toll, along with former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, in honor of Ashley Schiff, a beloved political science professor and environmental activist. Schiff, who died unexpectedly in 1969 at the age of 37, was known for his dedication to teaching and was voted among the top five best-liked professors on campus in 1968.
Apart from its beauty, the preserve’s educational value is exceptional. It is part of the curriculum for biology, geology, sustainability studies and Women in Science and Engineering, and it is often the first experience many urban students have with seeing birds and mammals in a wild habitat.
“I brought students from the Bronx and Brooklyn and for them, seeing their first deer was like seeing a unicorn,” said Sharon Pochron, a lecturer in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) and current president of the Friends of Ashley Schiff.
Seventy-five species of plants, including trailing arbutus, mountain laurel, winterberry and spotted wintergreen, are native to the deciduous forest. In a five-minute walk from Circle Drive south on the trail, three species of ferns, the ubiquitous maple leaf virburnum, and the colorful, edible mushroom known as Chicken of the Woods were all spotted on a late September day.
Ashley Schiff
“Stepping into that forest is like going back in time,” said Pochron. “There are very few invasive plants — only a limited number of Norway maples or Oriental bittersweet, for example.”
Pochron recalls her astonishment at spotting an American chestnut tree, a species commonly thought to be extinct. “I looked from the leaves to the plant guide and back, certain that I was wrong. The tree was 30 feet tall!”
Animal life abounds as well. Cooper’s hawks, great horned owls, red fox, possums, raccoons and deer are among the fauna sighted from time to time.
“The Ashley Schiff Preserve, which is on the Harbor Hill moraine, has exceptional glacial features including small ridges and valleys as well as kettle holes,” said Gilbert Hanson, Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Geosciences. “The ridges and valleys were formed by the advancing glacier as it pushed sand, gravel and ice in front of it like a bulldozer. The glacier then left a thin layer of till, including numerous boulders, as it overrode the ridges and valleys. Kettle holes in the preserve formed as a result of the melting of the ice below the till.”
“We hope to increase the level of awareness of Ashley Schiff through different events and more accurate social media use, said Hogyeum Evan Joo, ’19, who made the preserve as the subject of his honor’s thesis.
Aside from its scientific allure, the forest has also inspired artistic creativity at Stony Brook. Graduate student Jay Loomis composed and performed one of his own musical compositions under its canopy. On October 2, students and faculty donned “wearable art” embodying forest spirits and led a procession to the preserve during Campus Lifetime.
Stony Brook, NY; Stony Brook University: Friends of Ashley Schiff Park members (Sitting L-R) Karen Warren, Maureen Murphy, Dorothy Schiff-Shannon, Sue Avery, (Standing L-R) Sharon Pochron, Donna DiGiovanni, Melissa Kelly, Lauren Donovan, Michael Schrimpf, and Paul Siegel
A tour highlighting the preserve’s history, geology and unique ecosystem begins at 12:00 noon October 4. A 50th Anniversary celebration is slated to begin at 5:30 pm in the Charles B. Wang Center.
What makes Ashley Schiff even more precious is its rarity. According to Pochron, few universities contain their own designated nature preserves. Only 15 of 66 SUNY campuses have protected areas; only two of the eight Ivy League schools do.
Schiff’s widow, Dorothy Schiff-Shannon, said of the preserve: “It was inspired in grief and shock but his name is appropriately remembered. The students wanted a preserve instead of a building. When President Toll came to our home to tell us about the forest dedication, there was no wink and a nod. It was a handshake and a promise. He meant for the woods to remain wild in perpetuity.”
Stony Brook Know-How Helps to Protect Long Island’s Water Supply
Photo above: Frank Russo delivers a rundown on Stony Brook University’s Wastewater Research and Innovation Facility.
From Stony Brook Know-How Helps to Protect Long Island’s Water Supply on Stony Brook News by Rob Emproto on August 30, 2019.
There are now about 250,000 cesspools in place in Suffolk County, and another 100,000 Suffolk properties deploy septic systems.
“That’s not a good thing,” said Frank Russo, associate director for wastewater initiatives at the Stony Brook Center for Clean Water Technology. “We’re dumping sewage into the ground, and that eventually makes its way to the groundwater.”
It’s an urgent problem that Stony Brook scientists are helping to fix.
Stony Brook’s Christopher Gobler is one of Long Island’s leading experts on water conservation.
“Long Island relies on groundwater as our only option for drinking water,” said Christopher J. Gobler, professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the Center for Clean Water Technology.
“Given trends in surface and groundwater quality since the late twentieth century, it is clear changes are needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of clean water for Long Island,” Gobler said. “The Center for Clean Water Technology will continue to partner with state and local governments and industry to being these changes via innovative solutions.”
Chemically speaking, the culprit is nitrate, an inorganic compound that occurs under a variety of conditions in the environment, both naturally and synthetically. Nitrate is one of the most common groundwater contaminants in suburban areas, and is regulated in drinking water primarily because excess levels can cause methemoglobinemia, or “blue baby” disease.
Nitrate in groundwater originates primarily from septic systems, and from items commonly found in any household – soaps, shampoos, cleaners, pharmaceuticals, and many other products. Though these wastes are deposited deep in the ground, they eventually seep up. On Long Island, that means the nitrate ends up in places like Great South Bay, Peconic Bay, and the Long Island Sound, which feed the Island’s drinking water supply.
That decades-long legacy of nitrogen-rich waste moving from homes to the ecosystem has contributed to the creation of harmful algal blooms, a decrease in the shellfish population, and lower oxygen levels in Long Island’s surface waters, including its bays, rivers and the Sound.
“Do you remember the problems Florida had with its water?” asks Russo, referring to the harmful and well-documented algal blooms the state experienced in 2018. “Long Island is not too far away from that.”
To help combat the problem, Stony Brook is working to develop technology that will remove nitrogen before it can reach the groundwater. The initiative, dubbed “10/10/30,” aims to develop technology that can get the nitrate levels down to 10 mg/liter in a system that costs no more than $10,000 and has a lifespan of at least 30 years.
“We are pilot testing a version of this system, but the current version is too land-intensive for Long Island, which has many plots of ¼-acre or less,” explained Russo. “We need to understand the process, apply existing theories and combine it with our research to get it to a point where it’s viable.”
To facilitate the necessary research, the Center for Clean Water Technology operates a state-of-the-art Wastewater Research & Innovation Facility (WRIF) for the purpose of developing an affordable onsite wastewater treatment system that reduces total nitrogen to less than 10 mg/L prior to groundwater discharge. The facility is a working laboratory that utilizes domestic sewage collected at the Suffolk County Sewer District No. 10 pumping station for actual use within the facility. These systems are intended eventually to replace archaic cesspools that provide virtually no treatment for nitrogen.
Unfortunately, nitrates present just one challenge. Another contaminant becoming more common in Long Island’s groundwater is a compound called 1,4-dioxane, which is a waste product resulting from the manufacturing processes that were pervasive during Long Island’s industrial heyday. Stony Brook is currently providing grant support to test an advanced oxidation process to combat this challenge.
“If regulation kicks in, public water supplies will need to meet the new standards,” warns Arjun Venkatesan, associate director for drinking water at the Stony Brook Center for Clean Water Technology. “If that happens, that means that more than 200 water treatment facilities on Long Island will need to be upgraded at a cost of more than $1 million per system.”
Venkatesan’s cost estimate is significantly more conservative than the roughly $300 million cost estimated by New York’s Department of Health (NYDOH) in 2018. And to illustrate the extent of how unknown the cost of such regulation might be, the NYDOH’s number is less than half of the astounding $840 million the Long Island Conference, a group of water professionals that focus on keeping Long Island’s water supply safe and plentiful, says it would cost to add treatment systems to the 185 drinking water wells contaminated by 1,4-dioxane, according to a Newsday report in February 2019.
Though drinking water cleanliness is an important driver in this research, there’s another potentially catastrophic danger that’s growing; Long Island’s wetlands are disappearing. The wetlands absorb tidal surges, serving as an important barrier during hurricanes. The devastating effects of this erosion were realized in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast and caused an estimated $19 billion of damage to New York City and the surrounding areas, including Long Island.
With the damages of Sandy still being felt by many seven years later, efforts are moving ahead in earnest. There is currently one pilot system running full-scale in Suffolk County, though any wide-scale solution is still years away.
“There are important questions that need to be answered,” said Venkatesan. “We’re trying to attach emerging contaminants and others that are not currently regulated. We need to develop a fundamental understand of the chemical transformation and any potential by-products and figure out the best way to move forward.”
Bassem Allam Invested as Inaugural Marinetics Endowed Professor
Photo above: Bassem Allam was formally invested as the Marinetics Endowed Professor of Marine Science in Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) on April 26. From left to right: Bassem Allam, SoMAS Dean’s Council Chair Bob Maze, Stony Brook Foundation Vice-Chair Laurie Landeau, and Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Minghua Zhang.
From Bassem Allam Invested as Inaugural Marinetics Endowed Professor on Stony Brook News, August 6, 2019 by Elliot Olshansky
Laurie Landeau and Robert Maze continue to support vital research at Stony Brook
What does it mean to be an endowed professor?
For Bassem Allam, formally invested on April 26 as the Marinetics Endowed Professor in Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), it means the freedom to follow his instincts as a scientist, pursuing knowledge that can help protect and restore marine resources without worrying about securing funding.
“Having this endowment has really allowed me — and, by extension, my graduate students — to take more risks in our research,” Allam said of his endowed professorship, “knowing that we have funding to repeat an experiment, or to do more work than was scheduled in any grants we have.”
Allam’s research is centered on interactions between marine mollusks and waterborne microorganisms in general and, in particular, the framework of host-pathogen interactions. Specifically, Allam has done extensive work with clams and their reactions to Quahog Parasite Unknown (aka “QPX”), a protozoan microbe that affects clams in waters from eastern Canada to the Mid-Atlantic region, and severely impacted New York clam harvests in the 2000s. In recent years, Allam has found funding from the endowed professorship invaluable to his efforts, illustrating the importance of endowed professorships for his research and other scientific endeavors.
“For years,” Allam said, “we didn’t understand how the clam responds to the infection. With the endowment providing additional resources, we were able to sequence the genome of the hard clam. We didn’t have any grant money to do it.
With the genome sequenced, Allam and his colleagues are able to advise farmers on selective breeding, improving the clam population’s overall resistance to QPX.
“We are generating data that is useful,” Allam said. “Farmers can know what clam strain to breed versus what clam strain to avoid.”
Allam has also used resources from the endowed professorship to connect and collaborate with colleagues across the globe. He recently published a paper with researchers in Italy, using data mining to discover new viruses affecting shellfish, some widespread and others localized to a particular region.
“There’s lots of data sets people generate in their labs and put in repositories of data,” Allam said. “In that data, there is information about viruses that affect these animals, and people don’t look at them, because it’s a small amount of the data. So, we went back, examined that data, and we did the mining of that information and discovered information about several new viruses in that data set.”
Allam’s work perfectly reflects the interests of Laurie Landeau and Robert Maze, an aquatic veterinarian and a PhD in ecological parasitology respectively, whose gift created the Marinetics Endowed Professorship. The endowed professorship continues a long and productive relationship between Landeau, Maze, and Stony Brook that began when Landeau brought the Aquavet program to the University’s Southampton campus.
Since that initial connection, Landeau and Maze have supported SoMAS through the establishment of the Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program, the Maze-Landeau Fellows Program, the Minghua Zhang Early Career Faculty Innovation Fund and the Dean’s Fund for Success. As their relationship with SoMAS and Stony Brook as a whole has grown — Maze chairs the SoMAS Dean’s Council, while Landeau is Vice-Chair of the Stony Brook Foundation Board — their leadership and continued confidence in the School are made even more meaningful by their deep knowledge in the field.
For Stony Brook Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Minghua Zhang, who was dean of SoMAS when the Marinetics Professorship was established, that leadership has made a world of difference.
“For a long time, the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences had no endowed professorship among the tenured and tenure track faculty,” Zhang said. “We were an outlier among schools of similar national and international reputations. It was Laurie and Bob who changed this.”
In formally investing Allam, Landeau and Maze took time to recognize the value of his contributions.
“Bassem Allam is someone we’ve known for a long time and whom we admire greatly,” Landeau said. “What I always hear is how great a mentor he is, and think if any of his graduate students were up here, they’d say the same thing, that he’s not only a great scientist and a leader in terms of the health of the waters around here, but that he’s also a great graduate student mentor.”
“Bassem is a great example of the nurturing, enlightening and rigorous environment that SoMAS perpetuates,” Maze added.
That enthusiasm is shared by Zhang’s successor as Dean of SoMAS, Paul Shepson.
“Prof. Allam brings great credit to Stony Brook University and SoMAS,” Shepson said. “His work on shellfish ecology, physiology, pathology, immunology, and genetics reflect Bassem’s commitment to excellence and to conducting research with great societal value. We are grateful to Drs. Landeau and Maze for their generosity and foresight, and delighted about the recognition that comes with this endowed professorship, and the impact it will have, enabling Bassem to explore and extend his scholarship, and creativity, taking him, we trust, far beyond.”
By the same token, in their continued support of SoMAS, Maze and Landeau exemplify the difference that informed support can make in advancing vital research.
“Support for vital research scholarship is particularly meaningful when it comes from a place of deep knowledge and genuine commitment,” said Stony Brook University Interim President Michael A. Bernstein. “We are grateful for — and honored by — the support that Laurie Landeau and Bob Maze continue to provide to Stony Brook and our School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, including the Marinetics Endowed Professorship.”
As he continues his work as the Marinetics Endowed Professor, Allam is eager to continue making the most of the resources afforded to him by his position.
“I’m looking forward to taking more risk across the board,” Allam said. “Hopefully, this position will enable discoveries where the risk is high, but the return on investment is also high.”
SoMAS Support for Long Beach Water Pollution Control Plant Consolidation Project
Photo Above: A diver prepares to explore the western bays for a study conducted by SoMAS in 2010
The Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) supports Nassau County and the City of Long Beach’s funding proposals for the implementation of the Long Beach Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) Consolidation Project.
The shoreline of the Western Bays region of the South Shore Estuary Reserve is highly developed and modified.
The Western Bays salt marsh ecosystem is an important wildlife habitat, recreational center, and aesthetic asset to Nassau County, but it has a number of significant environmental challenges. Among them are many water quality impacts that threaten public health as well as marine plants and animals. These impacts have been linked primarily to sewage treatment plant (STP) effluent. In fact, the NYS DEC and U.S. EPA considered the Western Bays impaired.
This project will convert the storm-vulnerable Long Beach WPCP into a pumping station with connection to the newly upgraded South Shore Water Reclamation Facility (Bay Park STP). When combined with the Bay Park Conveyance Project, the pump station will transport the treated water from the Bay Park STP to the Cedar Creek WPCP for discharge through an existing pipeline about three miles out in the ocean. This will result in a truly comprehensive and innovative regional wastewater management approach that will service close to one million residents. The outcome will contribute to the overall reduction in treated sewage and thus nitrogen loading into the Western Bays. The project will also create numerous economic opportunities by strengthening tourism and recreation in the region. When completed, these projects will represent a truly significant and lasting investment in bringing the water infrastructure in New York State into the 21st century.
SoMAS graduate student Ryan Wallace
collecting water samples in Hempstead Bay
It is largely because of the research undertaken and recommendations made by SoMAS investigators over the last decade that the Consolidation and Bay Park Conveyance Project were developed. Thus, we strongly support this grant application and its focus on improving the health of the estuary and nearshore waters as well as reducing the risk to public health. Further, it will assist in reducing acidification in our estuarine waters, a New York State goal. This coordinated effort between the City and the County will benefit Long Island and the region as a whole.
Thank you for your consideration to grant the necessary funding to implement this project to fruition.
Additional news coverage:
SoMAS Professor Named Interim Provost
SoMAS Professor Named Interim Provost
Interim Provost Minghua Zhang
Dr. Minghua Zhang has been appointed Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, effective 1 August 2019, Interim President Designate Michael A. Bernstein has announced.
Dr. Zhang has been a member of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) faculty since 1990 and currently holds the title of SUNY Distinguished Professor. He brings a wealth of administrative experience to this role, having served as Dean of SoMAS from 2010-2016, Associate Dean from 2003-2010, and Director of the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheric Sciences.
“Dr. Zhang is one of our University’s eminent scholars in climate science,” Bernstein said. “He has published in over 140 peer-reviewed articles in top scientific journals, includingScience. Minghua’s research has been supported by over $20 million of cumulative funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Administration for Space and Aeronautics, and the U.S. Department of Energy. His accomplishments are some of the most illustrious within the SUNY system.”
Zhang is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, an honor bestowed to only the top 1% of its members. He was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.
His research focus is in numerical modeling of climate and global climate change. The scope of his work includes the development and analysis of parameterization components in general circulation models, the diagnostic study of physical processes and feedback processes in the climate system, and the modeling and analysis of past and future climate changes. His innovations in climate modeling are considered highly influential in the field.
For SoMAS’s Oliver Shipley, Every Week is Shark Week
Photo above: Shipley prepares to submerge.
From For SoMAS’s Oliver Shipley, Every Week is Shark Week on Stony Brook News on July 31, 2019 by Glenn Jochum
Oliver Shipley might have one of the best assignments in the world— he gets to scrutinize what is arguably Earth’s most fascinating and feared creature in its natural habitat, from the safety of an underwater research submersible.
Having studied sharks and other ocean creatures as an undergraduate, masters and now PhD student at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), Stony Brook researcher Shipley was thrilled to get the opportunity this past spring to become a first-time traveler to the deep ocean, the most unexplored ecosystem on the planet.
Shipley’s mission, which included another scientist and a submersible pilot, was to survey the seafloor, noting all of the animals in view and to study the community structure. That meant searching for small sharks and other aquatic specimens to bring back to the lab.
As the sun set in the Bahamas, Shipley’s crew began its one-hour descent to 600 meters to scour the ocean floor with the help of light traps attached to an anchor line on a fish aggregation device at various depths.
“You felt like you were in a space ship,” said Shipley. “It was pitch black other than the sub lights. It was like landing on an alien planet.” “The submersible was extremely comfortable. I didn’t find it difficult to adjust to the conditions. The sub pilots make you feel incredibly safe. It was the fastest five hours of my life. I didn’t want to come back up,” he said.
Shipley’s connection to the shark-rich Bahamas began in 2012 when he was an undergraduate student working at the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) under the tutelage of Edd Brooks. In 2015 he met College of Arts and Sciences Assistant Professor Greg Henkes, Department of Geosciences, (now a member of his PhD committee) when he was working there as a research assistant pursuing his masters. Having multiple close friends who had completed the Stony Brook PhD program, Shipley found his way to The Henkes Lab and his eventual PhD advisor Michael Frisk, whose research interests aligned with his own.
With a collaborative expedition between the Cape Eleuthera Institute and OceanX, which approached Henkes’ lab to help collect faunal samples and provide scientific input, a scientific team that included Shipley was recruited. The expedition was to be undertaken on OceanX’s scientific research vessel M/V Alucia.
OceanX, whose mission is to unite science, media and technology “to explore the ocean and bring it back to the world,” has played major roles in nature documentaries such as BBC’s Blue Planet II and will co-produce the upcoming National Geographic series Mission OceanX.
“Ollie’s representation of Stony Brook on this cruise is notable and no doubt a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him,” said Henkes. “He has a real entrepreneurial spirit and we’re fortunate to have him out there representing the lab and the University in such a high-profile exploration.”
Shipley views the seabed from the submersible.
Specifically, the project aims to categorize deep-sea faunal communities in a poorly studied deep-water pocket of the sub-tropical Western Atlantic Ocean, the Exuma Sound.
“Previous work we conducted there led to the description of new species and it is likely there will be a lot more where that came from,” said Shipley.
On earlier excursions in the Bahamas across multiple islands including Great Exuma, Nassau, New Providence and Eleuthera, Shipley’s work has typically focused on the Caribbean reef shark, a species that brings millions of dollars annually into the Bahamian economy through ecotourism, including scuba diving and snorkeling. Shipley works with multiple groups including the Cape Eleuthera Institute and Beneath The Waves.
“My main interests are in examining how sharks connect food-webs and the implications that shark removal may have as a result,” said Shipley. “Sharks move through many ecosystems and as a result, connect them in space and time. The ecosystem connectivity is thought to be extremely important for ecosystem resilience, such as the ability of a system to rebound following a hurricane. Through chemical tracer analyses we are able to quantify the degree to which sharks rely on these different ecosystems for food and thus, which ecosystems they are connecting.”
Shipley and his scientific team analyze different tissue types with variable metabolic rates because they provide an indication of shark resource use and foraging across different time frames. Muscle tissue, for example, provides an indication of resource use over approximately one year, whereas blood plasma provides an indication of average resource use over approximately 40 to 60 days.
“The Bahamas is a great place to conduct research on sharks, because it provides an almost pristine environment to study sharks removed from stressors such as commercial fishing, pollution and coastal development,” said Shipley. “And we can use the Bahamas as a platform to introduce sanctuaries into other regions that need them.”
Shipley is on the go, much like the sharks he studies. He makes three or four trips to the Bahamas annually to teach students and undertake various shark research projects and also has a busy field season in New York during the summer and fall asking similar scientific questions including but not limited to: blue sharks, common thresher sharks, sandbar sharks, sand tiger sharks and shortfin mako sharks.
“New York’s waters support some of the most vulnerable shark species,” he said.
His team’s findings are communicated through a multitude of different avenues geared for a diverse audience — from high-quality scientific journals to policy makers, the public and “bite-size” content through social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
“You only have to look to social media programs to see the large volume of people who advocate for our oceans in general,” Shipley said. “I feel like this movement is beginning to turn the tide on sharks. The negative stigma projected onto sharks by movies such as Jaws is slowly being lifted. One of the key aspects of this movement is educating young students, who will eventually carry the torch. It is really refreshing to see but we still have a lot of work to do.”
Center for Clean Water Technology hosts ribbon cutting ceremony for Wastewater Research & Innovation Facility
The New York State Center for Clean Water Technology (CCWT) hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony for its newly constructed and operational Wastewater Research & Innovation Facility (WRIF) on Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 2 Parson Drive, Stony Brook, NY. State Legislators, including Assemblyman Steve Englebright and Senator Todd Kaminsky, both Chairs of their respective chamber’s Environmental Conservation Committees as well as Senator Ken LaValle and Assemblyman Fred Thiele attended.
The WRIF serves as a state-of-the art facility that tests CCWT design innovations to achieve advanced nitrogen removal for on-site wastewater treatment systems prior to full-scale experimental installations. In order to conduct such research, a constant supply of domestic wastewater is required. With support from the Suffolk County Department of Public Works (SCDPW), their Parson Drive wastewater pumping station diverts domestic wastewater to the WRIF where experimental columns and systems will be designed and installed to assess nitrogen removal effectiveness, proof of design concept, and development of empirical relationships used for experimental designs and research.
The site is located approximately two miles from the main campus and just off of Stony Brook Road.
Additional coverage of the ribbon cutting ceremony provided by Newsday, News12, Fios 1 News and WSHU.
Heather Lynch Receives Prestigious Blavatnik Award
Photo above: Heather Lynch, PhD, is the winner of the 2019 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists in the category of Life Sciences. (Photo: Rolf Sjogren)
From Heather Lynch Receives Prestigious Blavatnik Award on Stony Brook News on June 26, 2019.
Heather Lynch, associate professor of Ecology & Evolution in the College of Arts and Sciences, with a joint appointment in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, has been named a winner of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists in the category of Life Sciences. The award includes a $250,000 unrestricted scientific prize.
TheBlavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences announced the 2019 national laureates, honored for their work in the awards’ three disciplines —Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering and Chemistry. Nominated by 169 research institutions from across 44 states, the Blavatnik National Awards received 343 nominees-the largest pool of nominees ever received by the program for those 42 years of age and younger. Lynch was selected from 31 national finalists.
Lynch, who is also a faculty member of the University’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), was named a national laureate by the award sponsors for “her unique synthesis of cutting-edge statistics, mathematical models, satellite remote sensing and Antarctic field biology to understand the spatial and temporal patterns of penguin colonies to predict population growth, collapse and possible extinction in the face of climate change.”
“Big Data is a vital component in efforts to preserve our planet, for it is only through data driven interventions that can we strategically pursue a more sustainable future,” said Samuel L. Stanley Jr., MD, President of Stony Brook University. “Stony Brook University is proud to be a leader in research innovation, and this award is a testament to Heather Lynch, whose work will provide key insights on global ecosystems, and generate solutions to the most pressing issue of our time: climate change.”
A faculty member at Stony Brook since 2011, Lynch has received international recognition for her research as a quantitative ecologist monitoring Antarctic penguin populations, including the Adélie penguin. Her work with Adélie penguins in particular has provided key data on the health of the Southern Ocean ecosystem.
Dr. Lynch in the field
Lynch and her colleagues use field surveys in concert with satellite imagery that tracks the size of penguin colonies in the Antarctic. Using her expertise with advanced mathematical modeling, along with collected data on the spatiotemporal patterns of penguin populations, Lynch can detect population declines predictive of penguin colony collapse.
“Heather Lynch has once again proven herself an outstanding rising star at Stony Brook University,” said Michael Bernstein, Interim President of Stony Brook University. “I congratulate her on this prestigious honor, and I look forward to seeing many more accomplishments from this extraordinary colleague.”
“I am so delighted that Heather Lynch is a Blavatnik Laureate,” said Nicole S. Sampson, PhD, Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. “She is incredibly creative and her data driven approach to understanding penguin populations in Antartica is emblematic of the research process we need to understand our global ecosystem.”
“It is wonderful to see Professor Lynch’s seminal work so deservingly recognized. She has established a new field of quantitative population dynamics at the continental scale, and her innovative synthesis of big data analytics, physics-based modeling, and ecological science represents the very best of the multidisciplinary approach to discovery that we pursue at IACS,” said IACS Director Robert J. Harrison.
For the first time in the 13-year history of the Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists all of the recipients are women. The two other winners are Ana Maria Rey of the University of Colorado Boulder, and Emily Balskus of Harvard University, the laureates in the categories of Physical Sciences & Engineering and Chemistry, respectively.
“These three women are leading scientists and inventive trailblazers with stellar accomplishments in their respective fields,” said Len Blavatnik, founder and chairman of Access Industries, head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation and a member of the President’s Council of the New York Academy of Sciences.
The Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists provides the largest unrestricted scientific prize to America’s most promising, faculty-level scientific researchers.
SoMAS Professor Advocates for Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Act on Capitol Hill
From the Office of Government Relations Newsletter, June 27, 2019.
On Tuesday, June 18, Professor Nicholas Fisher of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) attended meetings in Washington, DC with staffers of Sen. Schumer, Sen. Gillibrand, and Rep. Zeldin to advocate for the Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Act. Consumption of marine fish accounts for more than 80% of methylmercury intake in the US resulting in dangerous health impacts. An estimated 200,000 children born in the United States each year are exposed to levels of mercury in the womb that are high enough to impair neurological development.
Currently, scientists must rely on limited information to understand the critical linkages between mercury emissions and environmental response and human health. In order to successfully design, implement, and assess solutions to the problem of mercury pollution, scientists need comprehensive long-term data. To address this discrepancy and acquire this critical data, a Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Act would establish a national mercury monitoring network to protect human health, safeguard fisheries, and track the environmental effects of emissions reductions.
The Office of Government Relations coordinated these meetings and continues to work closely with Congress on Stony Brook University’s federal priorities.
Greg Marshall (PhD, 2019)
From For Greg Marshall ’88, an Emmy-Winning Career Started at SoMAS on Stony Brook News on May 30, 2019
Imagine being underwater and seeing a shark swimming nearby.
What would go through your mind? Fear? Wonder?
Dr. Greg Marshall giving the keynote speech at the SoMAS 2019 Convocation Ceremony.
When Greg Marshall ’88 saw a shark in the water near him off the coast of Belize in 1986 — while doing research for his master’s in Marine Science at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (SoMAS) – he was struck by inspiration. That inspiration would lead to a career with National Geographic, two Emmy Awards, and, at Stony Brook’s 2019 Commencement, an honorary degree.
The inventor of the Crittercam, a non-invasive camera that allows researchers to record animal behavior in the wild, Marshall was presented with an honorary Doctor of Science at the Doctoral Hooding ceremony on May 23. Prior to the ceremony, he discussed Stony Brook’s influence on his career, his work with National Geographic, and his experience returning to campus as the Akira Okubo Visiting Scholar in 2017.
What does it mean to come back to Stony Brook to get an honorary degree?
As you can imagine, it’s amazing. I’m completely thrilled, and a bit overwhelmed. It’s such an incredible honor, and I suppose I think of it as the cherry on top of having an interesting career that started here 30 years or so ago. I didn’t go the academic route and pursue a PhD, but the fact that it’s come back to this is really a wonderful culmination of 30 years of hard work and a pretty fulfilling life.
Are you going to insist that anyone call you “Doctor?”
Of course! I’ve got my kids calling me “Doctor” already!
Actually, I’m a pretty casual guy, so I’m not going to insist on anything, but it would be a very nice little treat.
You mentioned that your career started here. Take us back 30 years or so. What brought you here?
I’d finished my undergraduate degree in 1981 at Georgetown, and I had thought I’d go to law school. I was prepared to go to law school — I was interested in international law — but I thought I’d take a couple of years to explore other things as well. I was interested in photography and journalism, so I moved to New York City and explored photojournalism. At the end of a year and a half, I decided, “Well, this probably isn’t for me, and I’m still not that interested in law school” — my dad’s a lawyer, so law school had always been part of the equation. But, I just wasn’t passionate about it, so I made a list of things that I was passionate about. No matter how I parsed that list, marine biology was on top. I thought, “I’m 28 years old. I’m young. Why not give it a shot?” So, I decided to find the closest marine science program that had a good reputation, and Stony Brook was at the top of that list. I came out the next day to talk to people, and brought my academic records with me. What I heard was, “You know, you’re well prepared for law school, but you’re not ready for marine science. You’ve got a lot of work to do to get into this graduate program.” They outlined what I needed to do: physics, chemistry, calculus, and all these things that I hadn’t focused on in college. I was told, “If you can do this, and do it well, then we’ll consider you.” The following year I spent here at Stony Brook doing those core undergraduate courses. When I finished I came back to the Marine Sciences dean and said, “Well, we talked a year ago, here’s my transcript for the things you told me I needed to do. Now, what do you say?” He looked at it, and said, “I told you this is what you needed to do, and you’ve done it, so welcome aboard.”
This was my passion, as it had been since I was a kid. It’s great that my brother came for the Doctoral Hooding ceremony, because it was really he and I together, out exploring in the ocean, snorkeling together, diving together that really nurtured the passion I have for the ocean. So, finally I was here, pursuing something that truly inspired me, and I remember this incredible feeling of satisfaction and completeness. I remember walking back from class one day feeling “This is where I should be. This is right.” It was a really fulfilling, complete feeling. As it turns out, the rest of my career happened by good fortune and some, of course, preparation to be lucky. I was fortunate to have learned some of the skills and background I needed to ultimately have a life changing encounter with a shark which opened my eyes to new research possibilities.
Let’s talk about the shark.
I was a student here, pursuing my master’s degree, but doing my actual physical research in Belize. I was diving for the research, and out there one day and had an encounter with a shark. I’d had others, but this one was a unique experience for two reasons. First, I’d just built an underwater camera for a film I’d decided to make about the research I was doing and the problem that I was trying to solve (at the time I was dealing with the demise of the queen conch populations in the Caribbean as a result of overfishing — and I made the film from the locals’ perspective about their overfishing of this critical resource). I didn’t have any money, so I had to build my own underwater camera which enabled me to make the film which generated money for marine conservation in Belize. So, the whole concept of filmmaking and conservation came together at that point in my history. So, I’d just built an underwater camera system, and it occurred to me the moment I saw a remora, a suckerfish, suckled onto the belly of the shark, “The camera that I’ve just built is about the same size as that remora, and if I streamline my camera, I wonder if we could ride along with the shark. The shark might not change its behavior, because it’s used to having a remora ride with it. We could learn amazing new things about sharks’ behavior and ecology.” That was the moment that my life changed course again. That was the start of the Crittercam. I thought, “Surely, someone’s done this,” but discovered that no one had, and I became passionate about trying to make it happen.
I came back to wrap up my degree here, write my papers, submit my thesis, and while doing that, I decided to see if National Geographic would be interested in my idea. I called them up, and they agreed to have me come by and talk. Well, they were gracious, saying “Yeah, interesting idea, but we don’t fund ideas that are quite this new and untested.” So, it took another five years of really intensive work on my own, with some little grants here and there — including one from Stony Brook — before I got my first grant from National Geographic in 1991. The next year, I secured another grant from Geographic, and they said, “This is interesting; you’re proving this thing.” Following that I starting contracting with them then joined the staff a year or so later. I was staff for the next 23 years in various capacities: I was a scientist/specialist, then executive producer, and ultimately vice president.
What was the first footage that you got that made you say, “Wow, I’ve really got something here?”
The very first footage was from that captive animal in Belize, a sea turtle. What was interesting about that was that the turtle behaved normally, and all the other animals in the pen with it behaved normally. It gave me confidence that this system had potential, because the animal itself didn’t behave differently, and the other animals it was interacting with didn’t behave differently, so it gave me the sense that there was real potential for doing good science.
Then in 1992 or 93, National Geographic decided to make a film about me and my early efforts, and they captured the moment on film of us seeing the first images from a wild, free-ranging animal in its natural habitat — a tiger shark. That moment was just spectacular. It was years of commitment, belief, and rejection and work, wrapped up in a moment where we finally see the world from from a wild, free-ranging animal perspective and I realize this is going to work. It was extraordinary.
If you go to drama school, you may think that maybe, one day, you’ll win an Emmy. You go to film school, maybe you think about winning an Emmy. You go to school for marine science, you don’t think about winning Emmy Awards. What did it mean for you to win those two Emmys?
It’s fun, obviously. You stand up there, they call your name, and you think, “Really?” There’s that moment, which is incredible.
In terms of the meaning, it’s bit more complicated. The award itself is fantastic. That part of it, to be recognized, contributing something unique and new in the film world, is terrific. I love it. But it became a bit of a professional challenge because the images are captivating and people in the media world began to think of this as media and not science. They would say, “These are cool images, and we should get more cool images for film.” Problem is, my primary objective is science and research.
I began to get calls from producers saying, “We’ve got to put cameras on the back of X, Y, and Z,” and I said, “Well, we could, but we’re working with animals and will only do so if there’s a good scientific rationale for it.” If we get great images that can be used in films and stories, fabulous, but our primary objective will always be science and research, and if that’s not the primary objective, I’m not interested.
Media and its impact in conservation are critical. My concern was the potential harassment of animals strictly for media ends, and that’s something I decided not to allow to happen. If it’s for research, and if interaction with animals is necessary in order to do the research, that’s a risk worth taking. Simply put, when we’re interacting with animals, there must be a level of additional ethical responsibility.
You came back to Stony Brook a couple of years ago as a visiting scholar. What are your perceptions of SoMAS today compared to what you saw as a student?
You guys have grown incredibly. The whole department (and university) is so much more diverse and robust than when I was here. That’s not to say that it wasn’t at that time; after all, the Marine Science program was considered one of the best coastal oceanography programs in the country. It’s been terrific to see the growth, the further investment, and the dedication to the fundamental principles of conservation and sustainability. It’s exciting, and important, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.
Greg Marshall with his son and SoMAS faculty and staff in 2017, when Marshall was nominated as the Okubo Scholar.
Chris Crosby (BS, 2019)
From Chris Crosby ‘19 Aims to Leave the Planet Healthier Than He Found It on Stony Brook News by Glenn Jochum
Maybe it was going hunting and fishing with his grandmother. Or being glued to the Discovery Channel as a kid. Either way, Chris Crosby’s love of nature was too strong to ignore, and led him to enroll at Stony Brook University following a tour of duty with the United States Army.
Crosby ‘19 went to college right out of high school, but soon realized he was there for the wrong reasons.
“I mostly went because all of my friends were going and I didn’t know what else to do,” said the Oakham, Massachusetts native.
After nine months working in the family business, a machine shop, he joined the Army.
“I was trained as an interrogator and sent to Hawaii, where there was no one to interrogate,” said Crosby. That led to him performing an array of random jobs ranging from occasional Humvee mechanic to shelter construction to map builder.
Off-duty he tried his hand at SCUBA instead, which rekindled his passion for the natural world. At the end of his tour of duty in the Army, Crosby realized that he was ready to return to academia so he focused on searching for schools with reputable marine biology programs. Since he was also looking to head back home to the Northeastern U.S., Stony Brook proved to be a perfect fit.
After two semesters of basic biology he was ready to make the plunge into the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook (SoMAS) core classes and focus entirely on marine life as a student in the Marine Vertebrate Biology program.
He cites Conservation Biology, taught by Liliana Davalos, as one of his favorite classes as Professor Davalos challenged the class to figure out on its own the issues that face the living world we inhabit and devise solutions.
Christian Crosby is a student assistant in the Ocean Instrument Laboratory’s EShop..
Chris also credits Conservation of Seabirds, taught by Emily Runnells and Marine Ecology, taught by Jeff Levinton for helping shape his academic interests, specifically mentioning Runnells’ use of academic papers from students to guide her lectures and Levinton’s use of humor and anecdote to unearth “gold mines of information.”
In the summer of 2018, Crosby interned at Volunteers for Wildlife, Inc., in Locust Valley, New York, caring for and treating injured and orphaned wild animals native to Long Island, helping them prepare for eventual release into their natural ecosystems.
“Skills I got to hone or learn while at Stony Brook are too lengthy to list,” said Crosby. “Some great educators aided me in the never-ending quest to polish up my writing. I learned more about statistics than I ever thought possible.” And in the ESHOP, the Instrument lab at SoMAS, Tom Wilson and Alex Sneddon have each taken me under their wings to instill a bit of know-how when it comes to their areas of expertise — Alex in meteorological instruments and fieldwork — and Tom in oceanographic equipment and engineering.”
Chris worked on an ESHOP invention, the Vortex Debubbler, which uses centrifugal force and gravity to extract bubbles in sea water flowing to high precision ship’s instrumentation, greatly increasing data accuracy. During his three years working at the ESHOP, SoMAS has sold 75 debubblers to institutions worldwide – a sizable fraction of about 229 units supplied since Tom Wilson and former ESHOP colleague Henry Harrison invented the debubbler in 1987.
This is where working at his father’s machine shop training came in handy. Chris has also worked on setting up and installing atmosphere radars for SoMAS that have found their way from the Hamptons to New York City buildings. And most recently, he has worked on SoMAS’s new Slocum Glider, an unmanned submersible that will take autonomous readings of the waters off the southern coast of Long Islands for weeks at a time.
By summer’s end, Chris will head to the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University and begin pursuing his PhD, to study how foxes and other scavengers that adapt well to human environments are affecting the coastal ecosystems of New Jersey. His eventual dream is to work in wildlife management or conservation biology.
“I don’t care whether I work at an academic institution, for the government, or for a private organization,” he said. “I just want my work to have a positive impact on the world so that I can leave the planet a little healthier than I found it.”
Charting a Path Toward Bird-Friendly Buildings
Photo above: Stony Brook University freshmen Garret Van Gelder and Katherine Houston.
From Charting a Path Toward Bird-Friendly Buildings by Glenn Jochum on Stony Brook University News, May 6, 2019.
Two Stony Brook freshmen recently took on a big issue on campus and beyond and got major life lessons in teamwork, experiential learning, how to organize a campaign and how to plan an event.
“This is a remarkable example of the passion and leadership of our undergraduate students in trying to save the lives of migratory birds,” said Alexander Orlov, Stony Brook Materials Science and Chemical Engineering Associate Professor.
The students – Garret Van Gelder and Katherine Houston – brought together policy makers, architects, the largest glass company in the US and campus administrators to help come up with solutions to a pressing problem that kills almost 1 billion birds worldwide annually.
The resulting conference took place during Earthstock 2019 at Endeavor Hall on Stony Brook’s west campus.
“Their altruism, passion for the environment and empathy are truly inspirational to all of us. This is a great example of future leaders Stony Brook is educating to make humanity kinder and better,” Orlov added.
Garret and Katherine each conducted independent ecological research in high school, which set the stage for them to meet at the University of Albany JSHS Symposium in 2018.
The common yellowthroat is a frequent sight on Long Island. Photo: Luke Ormand @JRookphotos
“We never expected to meet again after the symposium, but when we both began attending Stony Brook in the same year due to similar interests, we wound up working in the same circles,” said Katherine in reference to her partnership with Garret.
“The issue of bird strikes surfaced at a weekly seminar in the Department of Ecology and we realized as students that we might have a unique position to spread awareness on the topic,” she added.
They had both noticed bird strikes while walking between classes, and after consulting with Professor Doug Futuyma and PhD student Michael Schrimpf from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the campaign was born at the local level.
Their search to find authorities on the subject began with Christine Sheppard from the American Bird Conservancy. “Her help in connecting us with speakers was invaluable,” said Katherine. When the students learned of Assemblyman Steve Englebright’s past collaboration with Stony Brook, they reached out to him.
“There is a social network in the world of bird conservation connecting those who have worked on similar projects in the past,” said Katherine. That network led to Setauket naturalist John Turner and Orlov.
“By pure coincidence, Guardian Industries, the largest glass company on the U.S. market, has developed a solution which will be on the market in a couple of years,” said Orlov. “It is a glass that birds can see but people cannot.”
Alex Sobolev, an industrial designer who provides a human-centered design perspective to Guardian Industry, flew all the way from Michigan to provide an industrial perspective on the topic.
Englebright, who chairs the NY State Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation, credited Turner for first bringing the bird strike problem to his attention ten years ago but said it was viewed by many as “an overreach for its time.” He was criticized by the Daily News, for example, who used it as an example of government being out of control.
When the issue failed to gain traction in an oppositional Senate, the emphasis shifted to public education.
“Birds are not only beautiful,” he said, “but in an urban setting they are the primary exposure citizens have to nature,” he explained.
Englebright said that as chair of what is now a very different Legislature and with a modified approach, there may be more success. “Last year we sponsored legislation titled, “The Birds and Bees Protection Act,” linking the crisis facing both of those pollinators.
In January, Englebright reintroduced the “Bird-Friendly Building Council Act,” officially titled Assembly Bill 4055, to establish a council to promote the use of bird-friendly building materials and design features in buildings; research the magnitude of problems facing birds colliding with buildings; identify existing and emerging products, technologies and concepts to reduce or eliminate bird mortality from building collisions; and develop public awareness.
New York State Assemblyman and SBU Professor Steven Englebright gives the keynote presentation.
Turner told the attendees that 56 percent of bird mortality occur with low-rise structures, and that windows are the number two cause of mortality behind feral cats. Certain bird species are much more prone to collisions, he explained.
Much of the problem has to do with optics — bird optics. Turner told the audience that birds, do not see what we see — their range is less monocular or forward-facing than ours and they see ultraviolet light that we do not. More adapted to focus on looking for food or avoid being food, most birds have eyes that allow them to see a wide view of their surroundings. They also mistake reflections of the environment in glass structures for the real thing.
Turner listed some of the frequently-used devices that do not help reduce bird/building collisions, which include: silhouettes of hawks, single window decals, visual markers spaced too far apart, plastic owls, noise deterrents and treatments applied to the insides of windows. He said the majority of birdstrikes occur during the fall and spring migrations.
“Students taking my environmental engineering class often ask if pursuing career in environmental protection is rewarding. This wonderful grass root initiative by our undergraduate students highlights the main reasons to pursue environmental careers: empathy, selflessness, passion to help the vulnerable and leadership to make our planet a better place,” said Orlov.
Conference Program
8:45 – Refreshments
9:00 – Opening Remarks, John Fogarty, SBU Capital Planning
9:10 – Assemblyman Steve Englebright
9:40 – Reflections on a Transparent Problem, John Turner, Four Harbors Audubon
10:25 – A Bird’s Eye View on Bird-Friendly New York, Susan Elbin, NYC Audubon
10:55 – Break
11:15 – Alex Sobolev, Guardian Glass Industries
11:45 – Design Tools: Indexing for better Performance Outcomes, Stefan Knust, Ennead Architects
12:15 – Deborah Laurel, NYC Audubon
12:45 – Closing Remarks, Katherine Houston / Garret Van Gelder, SBU students
Speakers
- Steve Englebright New York State Assemblyman for the 4th District. Assemblyman Englebright would be discussing a proposed bill to institute bird friendly design throughout the state.
- John Turner John Turner is a co-founder of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society and served on its board for twenty-eight years. He also serves on the board of the Four Harbors Audubon Society where he serves as Chair of the Conservation Committee. He previously has served on the boards of the Environmental Planning Lobby, Open Space Council, Long Island Native Plant Initiative, Starflower Experiences, Friends of the Massapequa Preserve, the Coastal Research Education Society of Long Island, and the Long Island Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.
- Susan Elbin Susan Elbin is the Director of Conservation and Science for New York City Audubon where her work is focused on urban ecology—conservation of migratory landbirds, and migratory and nesting waterbirds in New York City. Current projects include making the city safer for migratory landbirds by monitoring and mitigating collision risks and improving stopover habitat, and long-term monitoring and research on nesting and foraging herons, egrets, ibis, and cormorants in the New York Harbor.
- Stefan Knust Stefan Knust is an architect and the Director of Sustainability with Ennead Architects in New York City. Stefan will describe site considerations and the application of LEED Pilot Credit 55 – Bird Collision Deterrence to new and existing buildings.
- Alex Sobolev Guardian Industries is an industrial manufacturer of glass supporting the bird-friendly design movement. Alex is an industrial designer who provides a human centered design perspective to Guardian’s innovation capability. He has been part of the core team working on Guardian’s bird friendly offerings and serves as an internal expert on the collision issue.
The video playlist for a selection of videos is available below:
Study Points to Kelp Farming Opportunities on Long Island
Photo above: Stony Brook University scientist Mike Doall, left, and oyster farmer Paul McCormick with kelp grown on the Great Gunn oyster farm this spring.
From Study Points to Kelp Farming Opportunities on Long Island on Stony Brook News, April 25, 2019.
Pioneering Stony Brook study reveals rapid growth of kelp on LI oyster farms with potential to restore water quality, create jobs, and serve up the next great health food for LI
In recent years, seaweeds have been notorious for washing up and fouling beaches on Long Island. Now, a collaborative team of scientists and marine farmers have demonstrated that the seaweed, sugar kelp, can be cultivated in the shallow estuaries of Long Island, a breakthrough that may unlock a wealth of economic and environmental opportunities for coastal communities.
A new wave of small owner-operated oyster farms is revolutionizing NY’s marine aquaculture industry, but a lack of crop diversification leaves these farms vulnerable to crop failures and/or downturns in the market for oysters. Sugar kelp (Saccharina latissma) is an emerging specialty crop in the northeast U.S. with enormous potential, but has yet to be grown on Long Island oyster farms until now. This winter, a collaborative team including marine scientists at Stony Brook University (SBU), 3D ocean farming innovators at the non-profit organization GreenWave, local seafood industry pioneers from Dock to Dish and Haskell Seafood, and several Long Island oyster farmers, have teamed up on a grant to SBU from the New York Farm Viability Institute to bring this crop to Long Island. The team deployed “commercial-style” lines of kelp on oyster farms in three estuaries around Long Island, including Great Gun Oyster Farm in Moriches Bay, East End Oysters in Long Island Sound, and a Town of Islip aquaculture lease in Great South Bay.
The results have been astonishing. In just three months, kelp blades have grown to over four feet at one of the sites, outpacing every known kelp farm in NY and CT.
“The implications of our study for Long Island oyster farmers are very exciting”, says project co-leader Michael Doall, a marine restoration and aquaculture specialist at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS). “Kelp farming can provide Long Island oyster farmers with a means to diversify crops, create additive revenue streams, and further contribute to the sustainability and health of Long Island’s estuaries through restorative aquaculture.”
What makes the study particularly interesting is the site where kelp has grown the best. Previously, the conventional wisdom among aquaculturists was that kelp farming needed to be done in deep water (i.e. > 20 feet) so that the kelp blades do not touch the bottom. However, many of the existing oyster farms on Long Island are located in shallow water estuaries, particularly on Long Island’s south shore. To the research team’s surprise, kelp has grown the best at the shallowest site in Moriches Bay, where low-tide water depths ranged down to just a foot. Despite this, the kelp has grown from seed to over 4-feet in length with the kelp blades clean and intact, free of fouling, tears, or damage.
“It’s astonishing to see how fast this beautiful plant grows,” says Paul McCormick, owner of Great Gun Oyster Farm in Moriches Bay and one of the study’s collaborating farmers. “It’s a low-maintenance crop that grows in the dead of winter, so it fits in perfectly with the cycle of my farm, offering additional income during a tough time of the year; I’m definitely interested in incorporating kelp on the farm.”
Mike Doall with kelp line.
And beyond its remarkable nutritional profile, kelp holds the promise to improve water quality across Long Island waters. While some aquaculture practices such as fish farms are known to pollute water ways, the combined farming of kelp and oysters is recognized as “regenerative and restorative” aquaculture, as the organisms collectively sequester nitrogen and carbon from estuaries. Furthermore, the kelp alone produces oxygen, combats ocean acidification by removing carbon dioxide, and may even combat harmful algal blooms.
“Long Island is in a battle to improve water quality and restore its bays, harbors and estuaries,” said Chris Gobler, Professor of Marine Science at Stony Brook University and primary investigator of the study. “As kelp grows, it removes the things we don’t want in our waters, namely nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and provides oxygen that all marine life need to thrive. We think the aquaculture of seaweeds represents another important tool for improving water quality on Long Island.”
In addition to occurring naturally in NY waters, sugar kelp is an ideal crop for integrating into oyster farms. First, sugar kelp is a cold temperature crop whose growing season is opposite that of oysters. This allows farmers to redirect labor and resources from oysters in the warm months to kelp in the cold months, thereby limiting the capital investments required to start this new crop, and helping farmers retain good employees and bolster local economies by turning seasonal farm hands into year-round employees. Secondly, kelp can be vertically integrated with bivalves, creating a three-dimensional polyculture farming system that does not require one crop to replace the other. Such 3D ocean farming techniques produce multiple revenue streams that are additive on a per acre basis, allowing for increased profitability as well as diversification. This 3D ocean farming model is pioneered by GreenWave, a non-profit working to catalyze farm replication and market innovation in New England and beyond.
“Being able to grow sugar kelp in shallow water is only the first part of the story,” emphasizes Michael Doall. “Sugar kelp will only be a viable crop on Long Island if there’s a market for it and if it can be profitable. In the next phase of our study, we will be engaging local chefs, restauranteurs, and other food industry professionals to evaluate market acceptance and demand for Long Island farmed kelp. Our early results indicate strong interest from the foodie community.”
“If sugar kelp can be profitably farmed in shallow water estuaries,” Gobler concluded, “it would be a true a win-win proposition for Long Island, benefitting both local economies and the marine environment.”
Building a Bee-Friendly Campus
Photo above: Apis mellifera, the common honeybee
From Building a Bee-Friendly Campus on Stony Brook News by Glenn Jochum on April 15, 2019
Bees are considered the world’s most important pollinator of food crops. In fact, it’s estimated that one-third of the food we consume each day relies on pollination, mainly by bees.
Knowing that, advocates from various sectors in the Stony Brook community are working hard to help promote a safe environment for these critical agricultural workers, primarily by declining to use neonicotinoids — nicotine-based insecticides that can be harmful or fatal to bees and other insects that pollinate plants. As it turns out, the University did not use products containing neonicotinoids on campus at all during 2018.
In 2017, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, became the first SUNY campus, and one of a few in the nation, to receive the Center for Food Safety’s designation as a pollinator-friendly campus. Now Stony Brook is inching closer to that goal.
According to Jeanne Charoy, PhD student in Psychology and coordinator for the pesticides working group of the University Senate Environment Committee, there is no official policy banning the use of neonicotinoids on campus, though it has been the practice not to use them whenever possible.
She added that the working group is drafting a “bee-friendly” revision to the University’s Pest Management policy so that the University Senate Environment Committee can vote on it and send a recommendation to the University Senate, who will then request a formal adoption to “not use neocotinoids and other bee-unfriendly practices” unless there is no alternative. She hopes the policy revision will be addressed in the coming months.
Kevin Tumulty, environmental services manager with the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, explained that his department works closely with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Suffolk County Health Department and current landscape contractors and has always sought to protect human health and the environment through the use of alternative means and methods to minimize the use of pesticides as part of the University Integrated Pest Management Program.
At Earthstock 2018, SOMAS Distinguished Professor Malcolm Bowman, left, reads certificates lauding greenskeeper Kevin Tumulty, second from left, and student Mary Bertschi, far right, for their roles in not using bee-toxic neonicotinoids in 2017 and 2018. Sustainability Studies Professor Sharon Pochron, third from left, also lent her support to the efforts.
The Stony Brook campus encompasses 1,454 acres and hosts more than 25,000 students. By contrast, the aforementioned SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has a total enrollment of 1,792, and the campus size totals 12 acres.
The most recent bee-friendly movement at Stony Brook began when undergraduate student Mary Bertschi ’20 transferred here from Coastal Carolina University, SC in Spring 2016. Seeking to find local applications for her affiliation with the Friends of the Earth BeeAction Campaign, a movement to ban neonics from college campuses and businesses nationwide, Bertschi approached Sharon Pochron, a Sustainability Studies professor who runs the Earthworm Toxicology Lab.
“Mary wanted to give a pitch to my classes to save the bees and I let her bring the issue of neonic use to the students,” recalled Pochron. “I found out that Kevin Tumulty oversaw pesticide use on campus, so I set up a meeting with him and he showed me the chemicals used at SBU. Mary had given me a list of neonics and after cross-referencing them with Kevin’s list, I saw they weren’t on it.”
Pochron then proposed making a “bee-friendly” designation to the Earthstock Committee and to Matthew Whalen, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives. It later found its way to the University Senate Environment Committee where the pesticide working group was established.
“I knew that with more than 1,000 acres of campus land, protecting this area would create a large haven for native pollinators in the area,” said Bertschi. “With a very well-respected ‘green’ reputation, my hope is that by adopting a bee-friendly narrative, we could be a leading example for other SUNY schools and businesses.”
How do the bees find friendly habitats? Pochron said that there is no short answer to the question. But that doesn’t diminish the importance of providing safe havens.
“Providing small bee-friendly habitats across the island and the region gives bees ‘stepping stones’ between big places so that they can safely travel long distances and promote genetic outbreeding,” she said.
Bees also find sanctuary at Stony Brook in the Ashley Schiff Park Preserve, Clara’s Woods and the numerous fruit trees on main campus. “As they bumble from backyard to backyard, they’ll find us and set up source populations here,” explained Pochron.
Stony Brook University Landscaper/Coordinator/Horticulturist Alaina Claeson began advocating for bees and pollinator/butterfly gardens more than five years ago on campus when she started tending bee hives, planting gardens and new pollinator trees. She also runs the production greenhouse on the Research and Development Campus and does all of the annual plant designs for graduation and other perennial designs and tree plantings on campus and is in the process of buying and installing a new ‘crop’ of pollinator-friendly trees.
Butterfly garden on the Stony Brook campus
Claeson advocates planting a three-season garden. “With plants blooming at different times the pollinators will always have something to go to,” she said. Pollinator-friendly trees include maples, crape myrtle, sweet gum, black tupelo, sourwood, black locust, linden, fringe tree and franklin tree. Spring flowers include crocus, hellebore and hyacinth; summer favorites are echinacea, yarrow, sunflower, hyssop, monarda and salvia and late summer/fall are black-eyed susan, asters, joe-pye weed and goldenrod.
“Without pollinators we wouldn’t have a lot of the food we have in the world today,” said Claeson.
SoMAS Alumna Laura Klahre ’97 witnesses the importance of that very fact every day. Laura and her winemaker husband Adam Suprenant own Blossom Meadow Farm in Southold, New York, where she grows strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, and cover crops of turnips, canola, and buckwheat. While she got her start in farming with honeybees more than twenty years ago, none are found at the farm anymore. All crops are pollinated by native bees, including the gentle, easy-to-raise mason bee.
Klahre is quick to point out that honeybees are an invasive species and that an overwhelming amount of evidence has proven their negative impact on the natural world. “In addition, native bees pollinate two to three times better than honeybees and the resulting fruit is heavier, more well-rounded, and higher quality,” she said.
Klahre’s farm is interlaced with trails of pollinator-friendly native perennials including blue giant hyssop, purple coneflower, wild quinine, sweet goldenrod, and common milkweed, and native shrubs including summersweet, beach plum and winterberry. The farm also features a large patch of managed grassland. “Seventy percent of bees live in the ground, so you have to give them a place to live,” she said.
Bee rancher Laura Klahre sits by her mason bee cottages at Blossom Meadow Farm in Southold, Wednesday, May 24, 2017.
“A large majority of bees and other insects are malnourished in today’s world. We need to plant more native trees, shrubs and flowers,” she said.
A marine environmental sciences major who earned her masters degree at Stony Brook, Laura said the switch to terrestrial ecology is not as big a leap as one might think.
“You’re dealing with the same ecological principles on land as under water,” she said. “Stony Brook helped me think critically and I take that information and apply it. I think it’s great that Stony Brook is raising awareness about how to help pollinators.”
Klahre cites bee-friendly farming for the quality of her organic products. She credits her father with giving her a piece of timeless advice that now shapes her own philosophy and drive: “He told me ‘All you have in this world is your name so you had better make something good.’ ”
— Glenn Jochum
Sydney Bell ‘22 Makes a Splash with Sustainable Designs on Campus
From Sydney Bell ‘22 Makes a Splash with Sustainable Designs on Campus on Stony Brook News on March 25, 2019
March is Women’s History Month and an ideal time to celebrate the brave, bold and fearless women who have influenced history. Freshman Sydney Bell is making history as she creates and sells eco-friendly apparel to help save the oceans.
Sydney, a Marine Vertebrate Biology major, wanted to be a marine biologist since she was in third grade. “I came to Stony Brook because it was so close to the ocean,” Sydney said. In the past, Sydney has swum with whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, trained dolphins, and volunteered at a sea turtle hospital during a marine biology camp she attended.
Her love for the oceans, however, is accompanied by a passion for art. “I’ve always drawn ocean creatures just for fun to use in my different art classes, and then one day I thought, oh, this would look really cool on a shirt, I would totally wear that!” Sydney said.
After a conversation with her father, who suggested Sydney make a business from her art, Tidal Tee’s Apparel was born. “All of our designs are ocean-themed, and 100% of profits from each design go to ocean conservation non-profits,” Sydney said. Tidal Tee’s Apparel has sold almost $8,000 in apparel thus far, and has donated to seven different ocean conservation organizations, including The Bimini Sharklab, The Black Fish, National Geographic’s Pristine Seas, The Cousteau Society, Sea Shepherd, The Ocean Cleanup, and Coral Restoration Foundation.
At only 18 years old, Sydney started her own business in which all of the apparel is sustainably made, employing water-based ink to eliminate chemical runoff into water sources. Likewise, the apparel is made in factories that use solar panels and recycle their water, and all plastic packaging used by Tidal Tee’s is biodegradable and recyclable. “I really just want to raise awareness about the issues facing our ocean and hopefully raise a lot of profits that will be able to help save the ocean,” Sydney said.
After graduating from Stony Brook, Sydney hopes to pursue research to help advance ocean conservation. “I was just trying to do something that would make a difference,” she said. “I really wanted to do something now to make a change.” Sydney also started a Marine Science club on campus to connect with other students with similar interests in ocean conservation.
“Marine life is so important to me just because we’ve only discovered about five percent of the ocean, and I think it’s crazy that we’re killing off all these species and damaging this ecosystem that we know almost nothing about,” Sydney said.
Sydney hopes that students gain a greater respect for the ocean and work to protect marine life whenever possible. “We’re so close to the ocean here at Stony Brook, and every little thing you do impacts that ecosystem.”
Tidal Tee’s apparel is now available at Shop Red West, and online at tidalteesapparel.com. Meet Sydney and find out more at the “Meet the Designer” event on Wednesday, March 27 from 1 pm to 2:20 pm at Shop Red West in the Melville Library.
Reflections on Jamaica
Undergraduate Paul Boasiako Reflects on his Study Abroad experiences in MAR 388 – Tropical Marine Ecology:
Traveling to a new country, exploring a different culture and venturing outside my comfort zone were milestones I never imagined myself accomplishing some few months ago. Why would I want to willingly leave such a beautiful city like New York to go study elsewhere? How can I go a day without a high-speed WiFi network? However, after spending a few weeks in Jamaica, I can honestly say that studying abroad was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. For the first time in many years, I felt connected back to my old way of life in Ghana and Mother Nature.
My study abroad class was marine biology field-oriented class which focused on studying the Jamaican Coral reef, exploring several anthropogenic and natural factors that affect the reef, Coral reef the impacts on the Jamaica socio-economic and tourism sector and the negative effects of invasive species like lionfish on the ecology of the reef. Most of my studies took place on the open Caribbean Sea and wet lab facilities in the University of West Indies, Jamaica. My classmate and I snorkeled and dove at several locations and depth to explore the different distribution coral types, marine the vertebrates and invertebrates. We also had the opportunity to assist in faculty research using transect methods and extensive statistical methods to explain findings.
Getting the privilege to study in Jamaica has shaped my perspective and life in several ways. Apart from the rich education information that I learned about the importance of healthy coral reef structure, there is one skilled I learned that will forever stick with me. As a person who grew up in the warm tropical coast of Ghana, swimming had always been a challenge that I struggled to learn and perfect but studying in Jamaica helped me overcome this obstacle with support from my classmates and professors. There were multiple occasions that my fear of drowning discouraged me from jumping into the sea, but the support from my classmates and professors encouraged and emboldened me to take my first paddle. As a result, I was able to experience unbelievable and beautiful scenes of different colorful corals, sponges, anemones, fishes etc. Most importantly, I had the opportunity to pet and swim with an upside-down jellyfish. The moral of this experience was not only learning to swim, but the importance of having the right support group in any crisis, confidence in oneself, and exploring new things outside one’s comfort zone. Moreover, I was able to see the impacts human activities on the corals, fish diversity and coral bleaching.
First day snorkeling and finding an upside jelly fish (Cassiopea frondosa). The jelly fish has a symbiotic relationship with an alga called zoozanthellae. These algae undergo photosynthesis and supply the jelly fish with nutrients whereas the jelly fish provides habitat and protection for the zoozanthellae.
In addition, studying abroad opened my eyes to the world around me. This is a lesson that I don’t believe I could have learned in the classroom. It required exposing myself to a new situation filled with new people and new experiences. I am so grateful for the opportunity I had. If there were one piece of advice I can offer to other students considering studying abroad, it would be to GO! Go out into the world and experience life. Find someplace that excites you. It is 100% worth it. Study abroad was one of the most formative experiences, and I know I will carry the lessons I learned in Jamaica with me for the rest of my life.
Read more about Paul’s trip on the Tropical Marine Ecology blog!
SoMAS Makes a Splash with Best College for Marine Biology Ranking
From Stony Brook Makes a Splash with Best College for Marine Biology Ranking on Stony Brook News by Amelia Camurati on November 20, 2018
College Magazine has ranked Stony Brook University fourth on its list of “The 10 Best Colleges for Marine Biology,” the only university in New York State to make the top 10 list.
Stony Brook’s program in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) was regarded for its hands-on field research and experience in and around the Shinnecock Bay, the Peconic River and the greater Atlantic Ocean through the Marine Sciences Center on the Stony Brook Southampton campus.
“The center aims to serve three purposes: education, research and outreach,” the magazine said in its review. “By tying these three objectives together, Stony Brook students contribute to maintaining important New York ecosystems by including the surrounding community in their research, and teaching them about their findings.”
Faculty and students in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, led by Dean Paul Shepson, are engaged in cutting edge research both locally and globally, ranging from organic and inorganic compounds in planktonic systems to global climate change and sea level rise, from marine conservation to severe storm forecasting, and more.
“Our Marine Science Center has a fleet of research vessels that take classes on weekly trips into Shinnecock Bay, the Peconic River and the greater Atlantic Ocean,” senior Courtney Stuart told the magazine. “This gives us young marine scientists plenty of opportunities to strengthen our research skills and learn how to use advanced research equipment—such as handhelds CTDs, D.O. meters, Profiling SeaBird CTDs, Van Dorn water samplers and more.”
The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) is SUNY’s designated school for marine and atmospheric research, sustainability studies, education and public service.
The school offers a number of degrees, including bachelor’s degrees in marine sciences, marine vertebrate biology, coastal environmental studies, environmental studies, and in atmospheric and oceanic sciences. The university also helps students explore new waters abroad with undergraduate and graduate courses in Cuba, Jamaica, Tanzania and the Bahamas.
SoMAS is one of the leading coastal oceanography institutions in the world and features classrooms on the water. The School also has a focus on studies of atmospheric sciences and meteorology and includes the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres, Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, The Center for Clean Water Technology, Institute for Particle-Related Environmental Processes, Living Marine Resources Institute, Waste Reduction and Management Institute and the Long Island Groundwater Research Institute.
Winners Honored at Evan R. Liblit Memorial Scholarship/Fundraiser Breakfast
Photo above, from left: Dr. Darcy Lonsdale with Graduate Liblit Scholar Karin Schweitzer and Michael Cahill, Chair of the Liblit Scholarship Steering Committee
The 21st annual Evan R. Liblit Scholarship/Fundraiser Breakfast took place on November 14 at the Irish Coffee Pub in East Islip.
Michael Cahill, Chair of the Liblit Scholarship Steering Committee and SoMAS Associate Dean Larry Swanson were the co-moderators. Welcome remarks were made by SoMAS Dean Paul Shepson and Stony Brook University Provost Michael Bernstein.
Claire Garfield and Courtney Stuart received the Liblit Undergraduate Awards which honor two outstanding undergraduates who demonstrate a commitment to helping solve environmental and sustainability problems.
Karin Schweitzer received the Liblit Graduate Award which supports a graduate student who demonstrates excellence in academic achievement and who is undertaking a marine, terrestrial, groundwater, atmospheric pollution-related or waste management research topic. Congratulations to all three students!
