UC Toxics News: Winter 2005
Table of Contents   Previous Article   Next Article

 

 

Bodega Marine Lab boasts its own cove, just steps from the main lab building. The crisp fall air provides clear views of the horizon.

The Coastal and Marine Toxicology Lead Campus Program, a consortium of most of the UC campuses and the Bodega Marine Lab (BML), hosted a short course in September for new students entering the program and the annual retreat for this TSR&TP lead campus program.

The morning session featured presentations from each of the students who had taken the week-long class in research methodology. The course is pretty intense---all day every day (and much of the evening and night) for the week, combining field studies, lab studies, and work on the computer. Students represented several campuses, including UCD, UCLA, UCSB, UCSC, and UCR. We (the audience) heard everything we ever wanted to know (and perhaps even a bit more than that) about the effects of creosote, a preservative added to wooden pilings that support piers and docks ubiquitously in the environment and particularly in Bodega Bay, on the local marine environment on and around the pilings. The students learned how to apply chemical, biological, toxicological, and ecological principles to trying to answer this question from a diverse faculty affiliated with the coastal program from UCSB, UCSC, BML, UCD, and UCLA that had volunteered to teach this course.

Course Host and Bodega Marine Lab Scientist Gary Cherr

An early afternoon faculty research session had Susan Anderson (BML and UCD) and Dan Schlenk (UCR) as the featured speakers. Susan introduced us to the EPA-funded PEIRR Program, a consortium of about 30 PIs from several of the UC campuses including UCD, UCSB, UCSC, UCLA, and UCR, as well as the Bodega Marine Lab, trying to determine the best biomarkers of ecosystem health that can be used to guide regulatory agency decision making for ecosystem restoration and cleanup. Dan discussed his laboratory’s work on environmental estrogens in aquatic organisms.

Coastal Toxicology faculty enthusiastically discuss the course

The other afternoon sessions featured the theme of “Is there life after the Coastal Toxics program?” with two program alumni describing their subsequent career tracks. Julie Kellner who recently received her PhD from UCSB is currently doing a postdoctoral fellowship at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in their biogeography program . Craig Shuman (MS from UCSB and Ph.D. from UCLA) is now working for Save the Bay, a non-governmental organization which does advocacy work for the protection and cleanup of Santa Monica Bay. Both feel that their interdisciplinary training in the Coastal program uniquely prepared them for their current work, and both feel they are making a difference in protecting the environment in their current jobs.

Students enjoy a quiet moment during break

The evening ended with a salmon barbeque and a lot of informal discussion about the course, the program, and the future career tracks for the new students as they enter graduate programs on the different campuses. Prior courses have resulted in the students maintaining contact with each other, and often collaborating on subsequent research, a process that sometimes can bring new faculty into the program. Hopefully, the same will be true for this group.

 

Table of Contents   Previous Article    Next Article