Lucy Plessis-Belair (Ph.D. Student) – My areas of study and research include shellfish restoration and recruitment in places where oyster populations have declined for various reasons. The implications of improved oyster populations and how they impact water quality and surrounding benthic communities are of interest to me as well. I worked on a water quality improvement project based in Port Jefferson Harbor with the Town of Brookhaven in the summer of 2021 that will begin phase two of the project this spring.
I came to Peterson lab long ago by way of Stony Brook University as an undergraduate student in a faculty-led Marine Ecology study abroad program in Jamaica, co-taught by Dr. Peterson. I later completed my B.S. at Stony Brook in interdisciplinary biology in the Spring of 2020. I went on to obtain a master’s degree in Applied Ecology from Stony Brook as part of Heather Lynch’s lab in the Spring of 2022. My master’s research focused on analyzing the anthropogenic impacts of large cetacean vessel strikes in the Antarctic and how the changes in vessel dimensions over time in the Antarctic are involved in these collisions. I worked as an intern in the summer of 2021 in the Peterson lab and officially joined the force as a Ph.D. student in the Fall of 2022.
When outside of the lab I enjoy spending time with my husband, an SBU Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Neurobiology, and our daughter, Junior Seagrass Ranger Willow, born in June 2022. When we find more hours in the day we enjoy hiking, traveling, Broadway shows, and staring at our cute baby.