[thatfishkid]

Click here to support Girls in Science and Tech. Club organized by Meaghan Clark

Hello, My name is Meaghan Clark, and I am a member of California State University, Northridge’s Women in Science organization. Last year, we founded Girls in Science and Technology (GIST), an afterschool program for 8th graders at Portola Middle School. You can see what we accomplished last year...

Hey everyone, Some female Scientists from my alma mater are raising money to get girls in public schools stoked about Science. Please through them a couple bucks and get the word out about this!

Thank you!!!

[thatfishkid]

Today I celebrated my one year anniversary at work! 🎉🎉

Being an adult is crazy and having a job that pays actual money (not just food and boat fuel). It took me a long time to adjust and get used to the "grind" but I think I've finally figured out how to this.

I'm def becoming a weekend warrior. Grinding away Monday - Friday and doing something cool every weekend. Beaching it, fishing, traveling somewhere, camping you name it. Being able to be outside makes being inside 5 days a week not so bad.

I will always wish for a job where I can be outside and fish everyday while still making good money (that's the dream right?!), but for now I'm happy where I've gotten and wouldn't trade it for anything.

** I'm trying to post more but since I don't have fun fishy facts everyday, I'm just going to ramble on about how things are going.

[todropscience]

BABY CORALS NEEDS HEALTHY CORAL REEF TO SETTLE.

Coral reefs and crevices create complex underwater structures. When turbulence is generated by these hard structures, it creates eddies that catch the coral larvae. Because coral larvae are poor swimmer, and are not able to suitable settlement sites on their own, depend on the structures that help shape these eddies, otherwise they are basically lost at sea, with no chance to settle and grow up. 

Nowadays, coral reefs around the globe suffer from repeated environmental disturbances, which are only compounded with climate change. According to coral reef experts, maintaining structural complexity of scales on reefs is vitally important in terms of aiding reef recovery. Relevant management actions include limiting factors that reduce complexity, such as destructive fishing practices, and promoting factors that enhance complexity, as algae-eating fish to the area to prevent algae from growing and smothering corals. 

Photo: A Flabellum thouarsii coral larvae, showing tentacles and a mouth, by Susie Blaser.

Reference (Open Access): Hata et al., 2017.  Coral larvae are poor swimmers and require fine-scale reef structure to settle. Scientific Reports.

[asapscience]

[aestheticalspace]

Completely unrelated,  but I wanted to show you these robots. Yes, these are not fish, these are robots - the future is now.  Not to mention that they’re moving apparently randomly through a three-dimensional space, and not touching each other! That’s impressive.

[hundred-and-one-bettas]

at first I didn’t read the description and was like “WTF WHAT BREED OF FISH IS THIS”

[thatfishkid]

ROBOT FISH

[servingfish-blog]

I’m obsessed. What was 6 is now 18.

[thatfishkid]

Freshwater fish are so strange

[thatfishkid]

by Kaitlin Ziemer and JR Clark, Science Exchange | www.scienceexchange.com Today, we celebrate World Oceans

Check out this sweet blog post from my work. We had a teach of researchers come to us to help expose shark poaching in the cartilage capsule industry! 

Apparently, I am our resident shark expert :P

[earthstory]

View this post on Instagram

Lightning strike filmed in the Congo

[thatfishkid]

This is so cool

[thatfishkid]

LOOK AT THIS GIANT SKILLET.

I could cook so many eggs or make the worlds biggest pancake

[theelicorner]

Look at this curious boy

so small

he gets swept away

he hide

one big claw one small claw

a sandy boy

[butts-for-days]

@crabs

[badsciencejokes]

Chromosomes!

[nationalsciencefoundation]

NSF’s Science360 Photo of the Week

How do blind cavefish find their way?

Imagine living in perpetual darkness in an alien world where you have to find food quickly by feel or starve for months at a time. The limestone caverns of Mexico’s Sierra del Abra Tanchipa rainforest contain deep cisterns cloaked in utter blackness. This is where researchers at the University of Cincinnati traveled to find a little fish (Astyanax mexicanus) that has evolved to feast or endure famine entombed hundreds of feet below the ground. Pictured here, a micro CT scan shows differences in bone structure between a surface fish, left, and a cavefish. The eye orbit has collapsed and the jaws are more pronounced in the cavefish, among other differences. Image credit: Amanda Powers. 

Like this photo? Sign up for NSF’s Science360 News Service for a daily dose of STEM radio, news, videos and more cool images like this.

[todropscience]

SHARK JOURNEY: A BLUE SHARK SWIMS FROM CHILE TO NEW ZEALAND IN ONE YEAR

The blue shark (Prionace glauca) had been tagged on March 23, 2016, off the coast of Valparaiso in central Chile, and it appeared on the outskirts of New Zealand. The shark traveled about 8.000 km in 415 days (1 year, 1 month and 19 days). This mark-recapture proyect is part of the tagging program of highly migratory organisms that the Institute of Fisheries Promotion of Chile (IFOP) has been doing for some years.

The proyect is led by Dr. Patricia Zárate, who explains “these small brands, teach us a lot at the time of recapture, we can learn what the recaptured animal has shifted and sometimes we can also know how much has grown”. The female shark, at the time of tagging was 106 cm in length, but when it was recaptured had grown 24 cm in one year and 50 days. According to Zárate, despite we know blue sharks are migratory sharks, this is the first results of a trans-ocean migrations of these blue sharks in the South Pacific, remarking the importance of knowing more about them and how they move in the ocean.

source: IFOP/Chile

[thatfishkid]

I made a new friend today. I named him crush!

[thatfishkid]

This was one of my first posts on this blog. I was getting ready to finish my undergrad with no clue on what i was going to be doing that summer. I had applied to a bunch of different REU programs around the US and nothing was panning out. Finally, I had already agreed to help my buddy Parker (@kelpqueso, he posts really cool stuff on the interwebs) do his work out in Catalina and Anacapa. I then heard about this cool internship in Taiwan and applied with little hope that I would actually get it. I had nothing to lose and BAM there I am 3 months later living and working at an aquarium in Taiwan doing research on fish-coral interactions and I got to see all these cute sea turtles getting rehabbed.

I guess the moral of the story here is to take risks. It’s the only way to be successful in Science. Sometimes it fails (most of the time) but every now and again you get lucky. And when you get lucky, take advantage of it.Don’t turn it down hoping something better will come along. 

push yourself out of your comfort zone. apply even if you don’t think you’ll get it. Go do science wherever you can

[badsciencejokes]

It’s leviorca not levy-ohrc-HAAA

[thatfishkid]

psa I’m just rambling all over this thing, so just enjoy the pretty photos of where I started and where I am now

I’ve been thinking a lot about how far I’ve come over the last year and I never expected to be where I am today.

Since graduating so much has happened!

I defended my thesis

spent a summer applying to every job possible (I swear I applied at 50+ places)

moved to the bay

got a full time job (which is awesome, and I talk to scientists everyday)

got a girlfriend (she’s pretty darn cool too)

submitted my research for publication (yay!)

still enjoying my job

I definitely worked my ass off and I’m stoked to be here but none of it would have happened if I didn’t take step out of my comfort zone and get lucky.

In undergrad I joined a research lab, learned how to dive, moved to Catalina, that got me into grad-school, studied one of the most elusive fish in Southern California, crowdfunded, gave a billion talks, and networked like it was my job.

All of these things, the steps I took, they all helped me get to here and made me the scientist I am (or was 🤔). It was a long road with hiccups everywhere but I kept pushing.

I have no idea where I’m going with this, but really I just want to help people get to where they want to go in science and make science happen for anyone who wants to do research.

Anytime I read about tips and tricks for undergrads, grads, and researchers I’ll try to post something here (and if I think of anything). I wish I had someone to guide me through it all but I just winged it and ended up taking classes I didn’t need to and was unprepared in some scenarios. With that said if you have questions or need help, I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

If you actually read all of this. You’re the real champ

[earthstory]

View this post on Instagram

natgeo Video @jenniferhayesig // A titan triggerfish rises from its nest to tell our team to move along in Anilao Philippines. Titans aggressively defend their nests from raiding fish, eels and passing divers. Once we saw that this wonderful creature had eggs to protect we moved on to stop distracting her from the nest while dozens of wrasse and a few moray eels steal in to gobble the eggs. If you watch closely this titan returns to the nest and lays flat across it to hide it from hungry wrasse. As this was happening the male, out of frame, swam wide circles several feet above us. From on location for @natgeoassignment Philippines