Best laid plans are probably not best laid … As I mentioned before, I had every intention of writing up posts on interesting papers as well as highlighting the hosts gracious enough to house/feed/guide us around this summer. Alas, time was my enemy and I barely kept up with emails while flying and driving around the northern hemisphere.
At long last, my part of this international effort has come to an end and I am happy to be able to return to normalcy, including catching up on all the posts that were sidelined.
Since May, I’ve traveled over 32,500 miles (52,400 km) in airplanes and driven over 5,400 miles (8,770 km) in rental cars (not without incident, see below).
Good thing I had insurance since someone decided it acceptable to hit my rental car and drive off!
With my colleague, Erik Sotka, we have visited Japan, British Columbia, Washington, California, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, France and next week we will add Portugal and Spain to round out a very busy summer.
We will have visited over 20 sites in Japan, 15 sites in North America and 16 sites in Europe. At each site we sample at least 100 seaweed thalli and score each thallus under a dissecting microscope for reproductive status … over 5000 thalli have been scored!
None of this would have been possible without the generosity of our fellow biologists across the Northern Hemisphere. The list is long, so thank you to all the students, post-docs and faculty that helped us across the Northern Hemisphere.
Before I embarked on this summer, Jeremy and I discussed highlighting field work and labs with which I would be working as part of this project. Now that I’m not traveling endlessly with pit stops to re-pack at home, I’m going to finally be able to highlight these fantastic labs and the research they are performing! Check back over the next few weeks for a flurry of posts on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to catch up on all that I’ve missed! In the meantime, a small selection of photos. Field work isn’t all hard work!
Lake Akan marimo
Learning the complexities of red algal life cycles in Japanese. Thanks Endo-San!
With A LOT of field gear, tiny cars in Japan and Europe can pose interesting spatial problems!
Three of our undergrad students, Paige, Sarah and Aaron, sampling with me in Georgia!
Sampling in Tomales Bay, CA – a return to my old sampling sites!
Sampling in Horsens, Denmark – it’s always a relief to find said seaweed followed by immediate guilt as it shouldn’t be there!
Anyone who studies less charismatic flora and fauna will appreciate this comic taped to our collaborator Florian Weinberger’s door!
Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle
Herbier National
Cakes in Morlaix, France
Notes on proper seaweed collection near La Rochelle, France
Sampling site near Marennes, France