How did the semester go by so quickly?

Hi everyone! Hope you are all looking forward to the summer. We are gearing up for another field season in Alaska, on St. Paul Island again, and lots of good things are in store for the summer.

An update on lab work - while the work is ongoing, things have been rather slow. One of the main reasons is that the process of measuring phthalates in tissues is really involved and requires lots of attention. I have a wonderful undergraduate who has been preparing tissue samples throughout the last two semesters, and this work would never move forward without her help. But once the samples have been prepared, it is up to the lab manager to make sure they are analyzed correctly. She has been juggling managing the lab and teaching for the past two semesters, and so whenever she is able to process a batch of samples for the project, she does so. Hopefully we will have results by the end of May and I can report back to everyone!

In the meantime, I've been practicing my science communication skills for the past few months. I took an awesome Communicating Science to the Public class this past semester, which really opened up my mind to think about the best ways in which to tell the story of plastic pollution and its impact on the Bering Sea. I have done several interviews and given presentations and have even written a blog post! I thought I would share that with you here:

 https://krakenandfriends.wordp...

More soon!

Cheers,

V