Erosion due to extreme weather and harsh storms is a serious problem globally, but especially on Florida’s coasts. Luckily, volunteers and interns at the Philip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami are hard at work ensuring that the vegetation and pollution on Virginia Key are kept in check.
Virginia Key: A Hidden Gem
Virginia Key, a small island off the coast of Miami, is a beautiful escape for locals. Just a ten minute drive from mainland Miami, the key offers beaches, kayaking, bike paths, and parks, and hosts the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, Earth Science, the headquarters of NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Center and their Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. However, because the key is small and covered mostly in beaches, it is especially vulnerable to a variety of environmental and anthropogenic factors that threaten the benefits it offers.
Meet Chloe!
Image 1. Chloe Jacobson collects a water sample at Virginia Key North Point Beach Park. Water samples are collected from at least 15 cm below the surface to avoid collecting organic material from incoming wave action.
Chloe Jacobson is part of a team at the Frost Museum working to restore Virginia Key beaches in the face of these threats. Chloe is a SWMS member in the University of Miami chapter who started her journey at the University of South Carolina, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Marine Science. There, she also studied geography, concentrating on coastal resource management and marine policy. Currently, Chloe is a second year Masters of Professional Science student at the Rosenstiel School, where she is studying Marine Conservation.
As part of her degree, Chloe works as a Restoration Technician Intern in the Museum Volunteers for the Environment Program at the Frost Museum. Her project focuses on studying microplastic concentration and distribution on Virginia Key.
What do the museum volunteers do?
Volunteers and interns like Chloe head to Virginia Key a few times a week to work in the field, restoring the beach habitats there by removing or planting vegetation. They spend most of their time at Virginia Key Beach North Point Park, which is especially vulnerable to habitat destruction due to climatic events and harsh storm action. Chloe works on the beach dune ecosystem to establish strong shorelines, an effort that is becoming increasingly important as rising sea levels threaten our coastlines.
Image 2. The beach-dune ecosystem on Virginia Key, featuring juvenile and adult sea oats, along with other native plants. A wide variety of plant species is necessary for a coastal ecosystem to protect against rising sea levels, erosion, wave action, and weather events.
What are sea oats? And how do they help the environment?
The primary way that Chloe and the other Frost interns and volunteers are protecting the Florida coast is by planting more native species and removing nonnative species that threaten the success of ecologically important plants. They especially work hard to remove invasive Australian pines (Casuarina) from Virginia Key and to plant the critically important sea oats (Uniola paniculata), which stabilizes the dune by catching sand and protecting against erosion.
Image 3. Newly planted Sea Oats at Crandon Park, Key Biscayne. On an average public workday, the Museum Volunteers for the Environment (MUVE) Program plants anywhere between 2,000-5,000 sea oat pods!
Microplastics on Virginia Key
Image 4. Macroplastic accumulation in the surf line on Virginia Key. These items will take years, even decades, to break down into microplastics.
Chloe’s focus is on microplastics, or small pieces of plastic under 5 mm. She collects weekly samples from the sand and water throughout Virginia key and looks at different sizes of five types of microplastics. Her final report will be published in May, when she graduates from the Rosenstiel School with her Masters in Marine Conservation!
Image 5. A water sample collected from Virginia Key that Chloe Jacobson will use a multi-step process to filter and examine for microplastics.
Leadership and members of the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) chapter of SWMS came together on a beautiful Sunday morning on November 19th to make a difference in the local community and for the world’s ocean. The crew was armed with gloves, buckets, sunglasses and sunscreen for a morning of trash collection and getting to know each other; the perfect first event for the newly formed chapter!
The NSU SWMS team combs the beach for debris!
NSU’s Oceanographic Campus is located within walking distance to the beach in Hollywood, Florida, and oftentimes students and employees spend breaks between classes and work walking over to the beach. Unfortunately, there is always trash to be picked up along these walks, and this is what inspired the NSU SWMS chapter to organize a beach cleanup as the first chapter event! So many, and probably all, people are in the field of marine science because they love the marine environment and want to spend their lives learning about it, protecting it, and conserving the biodiversity that it supports. Participating in a beach cleanup is not only an amazing opportunity to be at the front-lines of marine conservation, it’s also fun! Being located in beautiful South Florida, most of the NSU SWMS chapter and community already spend a lot of time at the beach, so what better way to spend time hanging at the beach with new friends, than simultaneously doing something great for the environment!
On first glance, the beach appeared spotless, and the crew wondered if any trash would even be collected. Low and behold, as NSU SWMS continued to comb the beach, trash ranging from microplastics and fishing line to bottles and cans was found throughout the beach. One of the most interesting pieces of trash found was a pair of doll sunglasses! Most of the trash found consisted of plastic, including straws, small pieces of brittle plastic, cups, straws, and wrappers, and was found blown away from the ocean and close to lifeguard stations and the sea oats. Beachgoers, lifeguards, and passersby wholeheartedly thanked the team for their dedication to collecting trash, and some even threw in a piece of trash or two themselves.
Chapter members share all the trash they found!
The group spent about two hours collecting trash, separating into smaller teams going north and south along Hollywood Beach. The weather was perfectly sunny and countless invaluable conversations flowed between club members about their master’s projects, labs they’re involved in, favorite marine animals… The list goes on and on. The creation of the NSU SWMS chapter has been a great way for NSU students to connect with people from different research areas and learn about some of the other great research being conducted within the NSU community, as well as create new friendships with other like-minded scientists. After successfully filling ten buckets of trash, the team ended the cleanup with a rewarding picnic. Everyone shared sandwiches, chips, and stories as they got to know each other and bonded over their love of the beach, ocean, and environment!
Trash collection information was reported to NOAA via the Marine Debris App (https://debristracker.org/), which was a simple and effective process to track marine debris for anyone hosting beach cleanups. Knowing more about the different types and amounts of debris found on a beach, or even on your street, can be the first step towards preventing it. In order to learn more about the problem and understand the types and amount of marine debris in our environment, we need to collect data. Debris Tracker is designed to help citizen scientists or in this case, professional scientists, make a difference by contributing data on pollution in our community. It’s a user-friendly app that allows you to categorize the types, sizes, and approximate quantities of different marine debris. The first NSU SMWS was a great success and the chapter is looking forward to many more events!
NSU’s beach clean up was organized by Breanna Vanderplow and Megan Miller. The post written by Breanna Vanderplow and edited by SWMS Comms Lead Katie Gallagher.
As I gaze at the sapphire-blue water surrounding our vessel, I know that just 2 kilometers below me is one of our planet’s harshest environments: an ancient basin full of salt and toxic gases. Also called “Pools of Death”, deep hypersaline anoxic basins (DHABs) are unique seafloor features where salinity increases to 10 times that of seawater and oxygen concentrations approach zero. These environments are cold, dark, and pressure is greater than 200 times that at the ocean’s surface. Deep-sea animals that swim into DHABs are poisoned by hydrogen sulfide and methane gases before being pickled and preserved by the salty brine. Despite these extremes, the top layers of the basin are thought to be hotspots of microbial activity.
Image 1. Photos of the video captured on the ROV camera. A) The murky transition layer between normal seawater and hypersaline brine in Orca Basin. B) Sediment core taken by the ROV at a depth of ~2400 meters and salinity 10 times that of seawater. Images by Veronica Hegelein.
Some consider these basins analogous to other ocean worlds, like the briny moons of Jupiter and Saturn. As a part of the NASA-funded Oceans Across Space and Time (OAST) team, I had the opportunity to sample Orca Basin—a 400 km2 DHAB in the Gulf of Mexico—during Summer 2023. During our twelve days aboard the R/V Pt Sur, our team of 13 scientists and engineers conducted 21 CTD casts and 11 dives with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) upon which 10 sediment cores were collected from deep within the basin. I spent most of my time (sometimes up to 10 hours a day!) in the cold van (~4°C), where my microbial samples would not be exposed to the heat and humidity of the Gulf during summer. This meant donning a beanie and jacket despite it being hotter than 80°F outside. Since we also want to do our best to keep the environmental conditions the same as they are in situ, this also meant that the cold van was kept dark to mimic the deep-sea. We took all of these steps, and I spent a lot of time in the cold, dark van, so that we could reduce the impact of experimental set-up on the microbes’ activity levels.
Image 2. The ROV, named the “Global Explorer” (Oceaneering), that was used to sample the basin. Image by Veronica Hegelein.
We spent Fourth of July onboard, which required wearing star-shaped glasses during our daily activities and included a delicious steak and lobster dinner from David, our cruise chef. During my free time, I made T-shirts and organized an awards ceremony for the crew and science team with superlatives written on shrunken Styrofoam cups. When Styrofoam is placed under the extreme pressure of the deep-sea, it shrinks, creating decorated cruise souvenirs ranging from colorful cups to shrunken Styrofoam heads. A little morale-boosting fun goes a long way on a multi-week cruise!
Image 3. Emily Paris with the WOLF NanoCellect Cell Sorter in the cold van (4°C) onboard. Image by Jeff Bowman
Image 4. Shrunken octopus made from a Styrofoam cup and the high pressure of the deep-sea.
I am fortunate that this was not my first cruise. I am part of a deep-sea microbiology lab, so it was assumed (but not guaranteed!) that I would get to go on a cruise at some point during my PhD at Stanford University. In graduate school, I’ve gone on three cruises ranging from one day to two weeks, with a fourth planned for next summer. It’s not something I sought out when applying to my graduate program, but rather something that just came with the task of studying the deep-sea. If people are in labs that do not frequently participate in cruises but want to participate, sometimes cruises will have extra berths available for collaborators to join, so if you are interested in getting on a scientific cruise yourself, you could look for similar opportunities! I have also reached out to collaborators on other cruises asking for them to collect specific samples for me, which is another way to get precious samples that could otherwise take a lot of time and money to collect!
Image 5. OAST graduate students sampling from one of the 21 CTD casts collected from Orca Basin. Image by Jeff Bowman.
Image 6. Graduate students Chad Pozarycki (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Emily Paris (Stanford University) celebrating Fourth of July by preparing to send a CTD cast equipped with “shrunken cup superlatives” overboard while wearing star-shaped, red-white-and-blue glasses. Image by Jeff Bowman
While each scientist onboard had a different project, my goal on this cruise was to understand how compounding environmental stressors impact the efficiency of various microbial metabolisms. This is important for quantifying nutrient cycling and predicting shifts in the face of global environmental change, as well as for planning life detection missions on other planets. We were lucky to have a WOLF NanoCellect cell sorter on the cruise, which allowed me to separate metabolically active from inactive cells at various depths within the brine and preserve their DNA for sequencing. These samples will allow me to explore what adaptations allow a cell to survive as an environment becomes more extreme.
Image 7. The Oceans Across Space and Time field team after twelve long days at sea donning T-shirts made onboard. Left to Right & Front to Back: Jeff Bowman, Emily Paris, Carley Ross, Veronica Hegelein, Ellery Ingall, Andy Mullen, Steffen Buessecker, Jordan McKaig, Cathryn Sephus, Chad Pozarycki, Miguel Desmarais, Clair Elbon, and Matt Meister.
This project was funded by NASA grants 80NSSC18K1301 and 80NSSC22K1409. We would like to thank Britney Schmidt and the entire Oceans Across Space and Time team (field: J. S. Bowman, E. D. Ingall, S. Buessecker, C. Pozarycki, C. Ross, M. Desmarais, C. Elbon, C. Sephus, J. McKaig, M. Meister, A. Mullen, and V. Hegelein) as well as my P.I., Anne E. Dekas (Stanford University) and members of the Dekas Lab. I would also like to thank Mike, Jason, and Nate from Oceaneering, the crew of the R/V Pt Sur, as well as our collaborators at Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
Written by Emily R. Paris
Edited by Katie Gallagher, SWMS Communications Lead
On April 26th 2023, the Monterey Bay chapter of SWMS hosted a Preventing Sexual Harassment in Field Settings workshop with the non-profit, FieldFutures. FieldFutures aims to make fieldwork safe for everyone. The workshop focused on harassment prevention by discussing topics including how to identify, address and play a role in halting sexual harassment. Participants benefited from learning prevention strategies from the workshop facilitator, Alison Payne, while also partaking in group discussions to examine their roles in thwarting harassment. Attendees left feeling more confident in their ability to identify, intervene, and report issues of harassment. Addressing how sexual harassment and assault threatens the involvement of many vulnerable communities is necessary in ensuring that, as a community, we are promoting equitable and safe field settings for all.
Monterey Bay SWMS at their FieldFutures workshop on April 23rd 2023
FieldFutures was founded in 2018 by Drs. Melissa Cronin and Erika Zavaleta. Using evidence-based techniques, they provide field-specific training for research teams of all sizes from individuals to entire agencies. Unfortunately, FieldFutures’ work comes from a need to reduce harassment in field work. Over half of researchers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields report being harassed and 20% have reported some form of assault while conducting field work (Clancy et al 2014). This idea recently came to the forefront of many institutions and departments with the release of the documentary Picture a Scientist premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. This critically acclaimed documentary illuminated the issue of prevalent harassment in field work situations and in geosciences specifically. The film follows the story of Dr. Jane Willenburg, a geology professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Dr. Willenburg was harassed by a supervisor in the field in Antarctica, and only reported her harasser after being awarded tenure. Her harasser was eventually removed from their institution.
Dr. Willenburg’s story is, unfortunately, all too common in STEM fields, especially in marine science. Marine scientists and oceanographers often report harassment in locations such as remote field sites or oceanographic cruises. According to a 2021 report by Women in Ocean Science, over 75% of survey participants were sexually harassed, with most reporting harassment in the field (Ackerman et al., 2023). Field work is often an instructional and formative experience, especially for early career scientists. Therefore, harassment and assault in the field is one of the major barriers to build inclusive marine science, geoscience, and broader STEM communities. As marine scientists, we should actively educate ourselves and our colleagues through programming such as those offered by FieldFutures or content such as Picture a Scientist to the pervasiveness of harassment in field work settings. Only by educating ourselves and our coworkers on the issues and holding those responsible accountable for their actions, will we be able to build more inclusive field work experiences for all.
To learn more about FieldFutures, or to request a workshop, go to FieldFutures.Org
Clancy KBH, Nelson RG, Rutherford JN, Hinde K (2014) Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE): Trainees Report Harassment and Assault. PLoS ONE 9(7): e102172. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102172
Ackerman, A., K. Yarincik, S. Murphy, I. Cetinić, A. Fundis, A. Miller, E. Shroyer, A. Busse, Q. Covington, A. DeSilva, A. Haupt, L. Johnson, C. Lee, L. Lorenzoni, B. Murphy, J. Ramarui, B. Rosenheim, and D. Steinberg. 2023. Know before you go: A community-derived approach to planning for and preventing sexual harassment at oceanographic field sites. Oceanography 36(1):38–43, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2023.112.
Written by Katie Gallagher (SWMS Communications Lead) and Alex Stella (Monterey Bay SWMS)
Chrissy Hernandez of Cornell is our current president. She has shared with us why she enjoys being on the steering committee in this second elections spotlight.
We will also be holding SWMS Drop-in “Office Hours” on Zoom: Thursday January 27, 1-2pm Eastern Time
The SWMS President, Chrissy Hernandez, will be available to chat and answer questions about the upcoming elections and any SWMS programs. We are actively recruiting for the positions of President, Secretary, and Director. Come find out if one of those is right for you!
If that time does not work with your schedule and you’d like to chat with Chrissy, please e-mail chernandez@whoi.edu to set up another time. Or send her a DM on Slack!
In the spring of 2014, Dr. Alexis Yelton had the idea of organizing a meeting for women in marine science to foster professional connections between junior women in the field and senior women. Alexis had successfully acquired funding to support the event through her NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship. At the time, she was a post-doc in Dr. Penny Chisholm’s lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA, USA, and labmate and PhD student Katya Moniz joined the effort of planning the meeting. They recruited Bethanie Edwards and Sophie Chu, both PhD students in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) Joint Program, to help plan the event. The founders each held a variety of individual identities that coalesced around the shared identity of being a woman in marine science. Individual identities represented by the group of founders included multiple aspects of religion, ethnicity, motherhood, immigrant generation, and career stage.
In September 2014, the first full-day SWMS Symposium was held at WHOI in Woods Hole, MA, USA. Attendees included people from the marine science field from the New England region. The keynote speaker of the event was Dr. Penny Chisholm. This first SWMS event was so well-received that the four founding members decided to continue and expand SWMS to create a wider community to support and advance women in marine science. As of December 2020, there have been seven additional SWMS Symposiums held, over 1800 individuals added to the email list, and 27 Chapters formed in the U.S. and internationally. Read on for reflections from the founders on their motivation for starting SWMS and their career updates.
Alexis Yelton
Motivation to start SWMS: As an environmental microbiologist, I wanted to create an organization like SWMS because I wanted to find a way to connect with other women in academia. I was considering whether I wanted to pursue an academic career at the time and was concerned about my ability to have a family while focusing on my work. The lack of role models who had done just that was very clear to me, so I wanted to seek them out as well as introduce myself to a broader community of women in oceanography.
Where you are now: Ultimately, I decided to leave academia, but I was incredibly happy to see that others saw SWMS as a valuable resource. I hope that it provided the support to women in the field that I had imagined. After leaving academia I pursued a career in data science, which has been a great fit for me. I am currently the Head of Data Science at a cybersecurity startup.
Katya Moniz
Motivation to start SWMS: As the mother of a 1-year-old and 3-year-old when I started graduate school, I was acutely aware of the extra challenges many women face in terms of balancing studies with being a primary caregiver at home. The fact that I couldn’t devote as much time to academics and research as other students in the program, and also the fact that I came from a largely non-science background, made it especially difficult to move past what I now know was impostor syndrome, which affects so many women in academia and particularly in science. My hope in creating the SWMS was to offer women in marine science a source of support and mentorship to help them thrive in science, whatever stage of their academic journey they were at.
Where you are now: I’m the Research Lead in Eric Alm’s lab in Biological Engineering at MIT, where I’m involved in the Global Microbiome Conservancy project, and our wastewater-based epidemiology work, which is currently focused on monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bethanie Edwards
Motivation to start SWMS: When an email went out looking for grad students to help organize a symposium for women in marine science. I jumped at the opportunity to be involved; As an underrepresented minority in STEM, I knew building an inclusive community could really help diversify the field of oceanography and increase the visibility of women in marine science.
Where you are now: I am now an assistant professor in the Earth and Planetary Science Department at UC-Berkeley. Using time-series sites and laboratory experiments, my lab group studies the impacts of various microbial interactions on carbon cycling in the ocean. My hope is to continue bringing scientists together from a wide range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, gender identities and orientations, and academic expertise to ask complex questions in a holistic manner. I currently serve on the inaugural SWMS Board of Directors.
Sophie Chu
Motivation to start SWMS: I was in a bit of a lull at the end of my 3rd year in grad school and was looking for some excitement. I had participated in a few women in science groups during college and had found talking to other women in STEM both validating and inspirational. Upon receiving Alexis’ email asking for help organizing the SWMS Symposium, I was excited at the opportunity to be part of this group to create a network and resource for women in marine science. I have grown both personally and professionally with the help of SWMS and its members and can’t wait to see what the future holds. Where you are now: I am currently a research scientist at the University of Washington/NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Lab. My work primarily focuses on evaluating existing sensors and developing new technology to understand carbon cycling and ocean acidification. I am currently on the SWMS Steering Committee as a Chapter Liaison and the Seattle Chapter Steering Committee.
This is the first part in a series of reflections from the Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) 2020 Steering Committee (SC) to increase the transparency of our internal discussions with our members and to interrogate how SWMS can ensure that anti-racist values are core to our newly-formed non-profit organization. We encourage feedback from SWMS members, advisors, and the marine science community on the ideas presented here and topics for future reflections. Feedback can be submitted as named or anonymous using this Google Doc, an email to swms.general.contact@gmail.com, a message on the SWMS Slack (#feedback-and-development channel), or a message to any SC member.
Part I: The HERstory of SWMS and Current Growth
The Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) was founded by a diverse group of early-career women from male-dominated and predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Read more about the founders in this blog post. The founders each held a variety of individual identities that coalesced around the shared identity of being a woman in marine science. The creation of SWMS was motivated by the need for a network and formal resource platform for women in marine science. We would like to acknowledge our founders and their roles at the time SWMS was founded: Dr. Alexis Yelton, a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Dr. Katya Moniz, a graduate student at MIT; Dr. Bethanie Edwards, a graduate student in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) Joint Program; and Dr. Sophie Chu, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. These four women originally formed SWMS to organize a symposium for women in science, with the possibility of creating a network to help increase retention of women in academia. In 2014, they ran the first SWMS Symposium as a day-long event at WHOI. The event was primarily supported by funding from the broader impacts section of Dr. Alexis Yelton’s NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship. Since then, SWMS Symposia continue to be flagship events for the organization with one (and sometimes two) each year! As of December 2020 with the virtual SWMS Symposium organized by the University of Rhode Island (URI) SWMS Chapter, we will have held eight different SWMS Symposia reaching hundreds of attendees, supported by many university and corporate sponsors.
SWMS continues to grow in ways previously unimagined. In 2018, SWMS leadership was formalized through a Steering Committee of graduate students from MIT-WHOI and URI. The majority of the 2018-2020 SWMS Steering Committee is white-presenting cis women who are based at PWIs, which limits the breadth of perspectives and voices represented in and by SWMS. Additionally, we recognize that not all identities are evident from appearance, so we’ve shared our individual identities and journeys in marine science in some previous SWMS newsletters and blog posts. This Spring 2021, we will hold the first elections for the Steering Committee. We hope that these elections will be an opportunity to diversify and expand the representation of leaders on the Steering Committee.
SWMS has attained legal standing as a non-profit organization with a Board of Directors using donations from a successful GoFundMe campaign. SWMS now runs with a modest budget, with currently a little over US$3,000 in the bank. To date, we have established over 20 SWMS Chapters around the globe, gained over 1800 individuals on our email list, drafted a research manuscript examining symposia surveys, and held events at international ocean conferences. In addition to these quantifiable accomplishments, we are especially encouraged by feedback from members that they found a new and positive sense of community within marine science through SWMS.
We recognize that our values and actions can mobilize our community in many ways, running the risk of upholding elements of the status quo, including white supremacy, anti-blackness, and colonialism. Instead, we commit to strive for justice in ways that center all marginalized groups within marine science. We are actively interrogating who has power, whose voice is being heard, and how we are all using the SWMS platform.
Similar to its start, SWMS has continued to be a grassroots organization that relies on volunteer leaders to run the group through the Steering Committee, Symposium Planning Committees, and Chapter Leads. SWMS leaders are graduate students and early-career professionals within five years of obtaining their last degree, which is central to our goal of providing leadership and career development opportunities to women to improve retention and success in marine science fields. As we become more formalized, we want to maintain the grassroots aspect in a way that advances intersectional feminism in marine science and promotes leadership by a large and diverse network of early-career marine scientists. With the growth of SWMS from 2014 to 2020, our sphere of influence is increasing, with a platform both within the US and internationally. Steering Committee leaders speak several times a year on international panels at scientific conferences and virtually. SWMS Chapters include high school focused groups like the chapter within Black Girls Dive Foundation, university-affiliated groups, regional chapters on the East and West coasts of the U.S., and international chapters in Brazil and Nigeria. SWMS Chapters are increasingly receiving funding and recognition for their community and scientific work with a growing number of SWMS events. SWMS is active on social media through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and has a community Slack channel. We recognize that our values and actions can mobilize our community in many ways, running the risk of upholding elements of the status quo, including white supremacy, anti-blackness, and colonialism. Instead, we commit to strive for justice in ways that center all marginalized groups within marine science. We are actively interrogating who has power, whose voice is being heard, and how we are all using the SWMS platform.
We’re grateful for the trust and continued engagement from the marine science community, and we recognize that the exciting development of SWMS has pointed out unexpected challenges and shortcomings along the way.Particularly, we have aspects of diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality within SWMS which we can improve upon and build up. We want to ensure that the current underlying principles and values of SWMS are clear to our members. Also, we wish to listen to our members about what principles and values are important to them and how SWMS can better support those. We find this particularly important to establish prior to the 2021 Steering Committee elections, and we look forward to new leaders bringing fresh perspectives and voices to SWMS through these leadership positions.
Current areas of SWMS which we are reflecting upon, considering action steps, and seeking feedback include:
Governance and transparency:
We are evaluating the creation of “SWMS Guiding Principles” to clarify SWMS principles for Chapters and members, who are the real-time agents of action and representatives of SWMS. We seek input about conducting the 2021 Steering Committee elections and how to best recruit future SWMS leaders from diverse backgrounds. We likewise believe it is vital to increase the transparency of Steering Committee discussions and decisions.
Membership:
We are working to define what it means to be a SWMS member. We also are focused on how to ensure SWMS members are represented in leadership and decision-making. This requires us to learn how to gather data on membership demographics. As we recruit members, we want to make sure that SWMS is an organization that actively supports leadership by diverse early-career marine scientists and whose members come from diverse backgrounds.
Events:
An important goal is to increase the participation of diverse speakers and attendees at SWMS Symposia Chapter events and within local chapters. We are seeking input on best practices to support Chapter-led SWMS symposia and events.
Organization name and mission statement:
We are reflecting on how the name “Society for Women in Marine Science” relates to inclusion, particularly in regards to who feels comfortable being a member and welcomed within the group. We are also evaluating the SWMS mission statement, and how it relates to the inclusion of historically marginalized groups within marine science.
These areas all are important, and we expect to gather even more topics to interrogate from your feedback. These require lengthy discussion and thought, so they will be covered in-depth in a series of reflections released over the coming months. We hope that anyone from across the marine science community will engage in this conversation with us — that you will comment on how SWMS can better uphold the values of inclusion and support for our members’ intersectional identities.
The Society for Women in Marine Science stands in solidarity with protestors and grass-roots organizers across the country who demand an end to police brutality, and that we dismantle white supremacy in order to build a society that is safe and equitable for Black people.
White supremacy and anti-Black violence prevents Black marine scientists from accessing the resources and power needed to fully participate in marine science.
Our mission is to support and uplift women who work in the field of marine science. In order to do this, we need to acknowledge that science is complicit in the culture of white supremacy that resulted in the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, among countless others. White supremacy and anti-Black violence prevents Black marine scientists from accessing the resources and power needed to fully participate in marine science. Institutionalized racism prevents marine science from doing work in the service of all people. Uplifting Black marine scientists’ important contributions is central to the SWMS mission. We are actively working to build a safe and just environment for present and future Black marine scientists.
Taking Action
We encourage all SWMS members to engage in anti-racism work, to pull down the systems of oppression, racism, and inequality that exist within ourselves, our workplaces, our communities, academia, and the world at large. We urge non-Black members to find ways to donate money, time, and other resources to causes including Black Lives Matter, Movement 4 Black Lives, Color of Change, bail fund networks, voter registration, and more.
We also encourage our members to do the hard work closer to home, to listen and learn. There are so many resources available for this work, including Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s’ books and his anti-racist reading list, Black feminist thinkers such as Dr. Angela Davis, and hashtags like #BlackinSTEM and #BlackinNature to find new scientists to follow and collaborate with.
ShutdownSTEM: June 10th, 2020
Finally, we support the #ShutdownSTEM and #ShutdownAcademia actions for this Wednesday, June 10. We ask non-Black SWMS members to disrupt business as usual, educate themselves, and make a plan for a lifelong commitment to meaningful anti-racist work. We will have a channel in our Slack workspace (open to all members) devoted to conversations about anti-racism work, which will be actively monitored and facilitated by members of the SWMS Steering Committee.
Written by Lauren Salisbury, Senior Marine Biology Major at URI
Meet Emily McDermith, a rising URI sophomore, SWMS member, and aspiring optometrist. Although she seems like an unlikely member of the Society for Women in Marine Science, McDermith has proven to be one of the most involved and committed members.
Growing up in Maine, she spent her summers on the islands of Portland. There, she says she “developed an appreciation and fascination for marine life”. Although she is a Cell and Molecular Biology major on the Microbiology track, McDermith still fulfills her passion for the ocean other ways.
Emily McDermith presenting her poster at the NSF EPSCoR Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Symposium
Emily was introduced to marine science during the second semester of her freshman year when she began working in Dr. Bethany Jenkins’ microbiology lab. Here, Emily saw an opportunity to further explore the issues that affect the ocean. This led her to apply for the NSF EPSCoR Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), which she was awarded. This summer, Emily worked with URI SWMS co-president, Alexa Sterling, and Dr. Bethany Jenkins investigating a possible mutualism between Antarctic phytoplankton and bacteria in low-iron marine environments. She presented a poster of her findings at the 2017 SURF conference.
Emily enjoyed her summer fellowship and said “Having the opportunity to solely focus on research this summer I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned. Being able to solve problems that arose and design my own experiments has taught me to think like a scientist. I’ve learned the importance collaborating with lab mates, especially when obstacles cropped up, and time management in the lab.”
McDermith plans to continue to conduct research and says it has given her a unique perspective that has made her courses more interesting and meaningful. Emily advises other students to pursue research experiences outside of their major. McDermith states that “Being exposed to marine science has made me a more well-rounded scientist.” This balanced approach to her career goals will surely benefit Emily throughout her undergraduate career.
Even though Emily enjoys undergraduate research in marine science, her post-graduate aspirations are quite different.
“I hope to go onto optometry school.“ says McDermith, “Optometry is a career that I can use science to solve problems in order to help others. It’s more than just prescribing glasses and contacts; it’s a chance to give clarity.” When asked what advice she has for those wishing to switch disciplines, Emily had this to say; “Don’t be afraid to explore all of your passions and areas of interest. Exploring marine microbiology has made me a more versatile scientist and has allowed me to bring a different perspective to my major.”
This semester, Emily is looking forward meeting with the clubs she participates and getting back into her bacteria research. You can meet Emily at the 2017 November SWMS Symposium.
