I am a research ecologist at NOAA’s Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research
in Beaufort, North Carolina, but to my family, I’m simply a “marine biologist.” I use underwater acoustic technologies (like fisheries sonar, fish-finding echo sounders, and multibeam sonar) to remotely detect fish and observe their behaviors in estuaries and the ocean. I also get in the water as a scuba diver as often as I can when my research takes me to coral reefs in the U.S. Caribbean, Florida Keys, and the Gulf of Mexico.


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Glaciers play a vital role in Earth’s climate system, and it’s critical to understand what contributes to their fluctuation. Increased global temperatures are frequently viewed as the cause of glacial melt, but a new study of Patagonia’s Gualas Glacier highlights the role of precipitation in the glacier’s fluctuation....

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Why did the atmosphere contain so little carbon dioxide during the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago? Why did it rise when the Earth's climate became warmer? Processes in the ocean are responsible for this, says a new study based on newly developed isotope measurements....

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The 2011 earthquake near Washington, DC, shook the nation’s capital with enough force to crack stones and loosen mortar in the Washington Monument. But not all effects of the earthquake are visible to the naked eye. What if the ground underneath the Monument shifted because of the quake? Experts from the National Geodetic Survey are nearing completion of a leveling survey that will help answer this question.

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Ecologists in New Zealand have shown for the first time that Marine Protected Areas – long advocated as a way of protecting threatened marine mammals – actually work. Their study, based on 21 years' monitoring reveals that a marine sanctuary off the coast of Christchurch has significantly improved survival of Hector's dolphins – one of the rarest dolphins in the world....

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Scientists recently concluded an expedition aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution to learn more about Atlantis Massif, an undersea mountain, or seamount, that formed in a very different way than the majority of the seafloor in the oceans....

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Scientists report "compelling evidence" that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has impacted deep-sea corals. Their study used underwater robots to investigate the corals and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography to determine precisely the source of petroleum hydrocarbons found....

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Filmmaker James Cameron descended 35,756 feet (6.77 miles/10.89 km) to reach the "Challenger Deep," the ocean's deepest point located in the Mariana Trench, in his specially designed submersible DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. The attempt was part of DEEPSEA CHALLENGE, a joint scientific expedition by Cameron, National Geographic and Rolex to conduct deep-ocean research and exploration. Cameron is the only individual ever to complete the dive in a solo vehicle and the first person since 1960 to reach the very bottom of the world in a manned submersible....

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Seismologists have just returned from a cruise in the Western Pacific to lay the instruments for a seismic survey that will follow the water chemically bound to or trapped in the down-diving Pacific Plate at the Mariana trench, the deep trench to which Avatar director James Cameron is poised to plunge....

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