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Nonprofit Organization
U.S. Postage
PAID
Boston, MA
Permit No. 430
Marine Science Center
Northeastern University
430 Nahant Road
Nahant, MA 01908
Events at the Marine Science Center
Summer Cinema by the Sea
These programs will take place at the Marine Science Center. Popcorn and lemonade will be served half an hour before the start of the program, and programs
will last for 1-1.5 hours. The MSC is ADA-accessible, and no reservations are
required to attend.
Tuesday, May 21 at 7 pm: Dawn of the Ocean – The First 4 Million Years
Tuesday, June 18 at 7 pm: Beneath the Waves Mini-Film Festival
Tuesday, July 16 at 7 pm: “Between the Tides” – The Life of Ed Ricketts
Co-presented by the Northeastern University Humanities Center
Annual Open House
Save the date – The Marine Science Center Annual Open House will be
Saturday, October 5th from 10 am – 3 pm!
For more information about the Marine Science Center:
Find us on the web at northeastern.edu/marinescience
Like us on Facebook! facebook.com/northeastern.msc
Check out our Graduate Student Blog at cosresearch.wordpress.com/
The Rising Tide
Spring 2013
Director
Geoffrey Trussell, PhD
Faculty
Joseph Ayers, PhD
Matthew Bracken, PhD
William Detrich, PhD
Tarik Gouhier, PhD
Jonathan Grabowski, PhD
Brian Helmuth, PhD
Randall Hughes, PhD
Gwilym Jones, PhD
David Kimbro, PhD
Mark Patterson, PhD
Rebeca Rosengaus, PhD
Geoffrey Trussell, PhD
Steven Vollmer, PhD
Post-Doctoral Researchers
Pradeep Pillay, PhD
Steven Scyphers, PhD
Anthony Westphal, PhD
Staff
Nancy Chislak
Genea Foster
Sal Genovese, PhD
Ryan Hill
Carole McCauley
Heather Sears, PhD
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MSC
A NEWSLETTER OF THE
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
MARINE SCIENCE CENTER
SPRING 2013
THE RISING TIDE
Sustaining Coastal Cities
Faculty Publications
& Research News
Cities by the sea are home to an exploding number of people, and are key
engines of commerce, defense, and our quality of living. Unfortunately, our
reliance on the sea is at risk and increasingly vulnerable because of increases
in temperature, sea level rise, natural disasters, ocean acidity, biodiversity
loss and environmental pollutants caused by global change.
The talented faculty has been very
busy with research! Several of them
recently had their work featured in
high-profile publications and in the
news. Check them out!
The health and future of coastal cities, as well as coastal natural resources
and services they provide, is the mission of Northeastern’s new Urban
Coastal Sustainability Initiative, which launches at the “Sustaining Coastal
Cities” conference on May 22 and 23. This kick-off event brings together international experts who will focus on the general plight of marine ecosystems
and the state of marine fisheries.
The Urban Coastal Sustainability initiative will leverage Northeastern’s interdisciplinary strengths to develop intelligent solutions that promote sustainability of coupled natural human systems. Such efforts are critically important
given ongoing global change, especially in coastal cities where the impact of
environmental challenges is accelerating
To this end, Northeastern has assembled two-dozen faculty and is investing significant resources to create a cutting-edge center for urban coastal
sustainability in Boston and surrounding regions.
Assistant Professor Matthew
Bracken’s work has been in the
news over the past year, including
features in the Boston Globe and
Working Waterfront magazine.
Bracken has been investigating
impacts of the invasive alga Heterosiphonia japonica as it spreads northward into the Gulf of Maine. Bracken
lab graduate student Chris Newton
was recently lead author on a paper
published in PLoS ONE about the
spread of Heterosiphonia.
Bracken has also recently been
published twice in Ecology. In one
continued on back cover
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Faculty Publications & Research News (continued)
study, he describes how diversity
affects multiple ecosystem functions,
and in another he explores factors
that shape seaweed diversity on
rocky shores.
raphy and Marine Biology Annual
Review. He recently shared research
findings and thoughts on WBUR
radio about just what we should do
with all this climate change data.
Professor William Detrich’s work
on the how “white-blooded” Antarctic
icefish lost hemoglobin and red blood
cells over the course of their evolutionary history continues to make
the news, most recently on the back
cover of The Scientist.
Helmuth also has several pieces in
press: findings related to measuring
heartbeats in marine and intertidal
animals in Limnology and Oceanography: Methods, research on seastar thermoregulation in Journal of
Experimental Biology, and spatially
exlicit predictions of physiological
performance in an invasive mussel in
Diversity and Distributions.
A short film about his work, which
won an award at the Jackson Hole
Wildlife Film Festival, was produced
by the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute and is available online. Over
37,000 copies of the film’s DVD
were shipped, and the film has been
downloaded more than 200,000
times.
Assistant Professor Tarik Gouhier’s research in Ecological Applications suggests that the design
of marine protected area needs to
account for complex fluctuations
in population abundance that arise
because of interactions between species targeted for protection and the
broader ecological community within
which they are embedded.
Professor Brian Helmuth recently contributed his climate change
perspectives to the 2013 National
Climate Assessment and Oceanog-
Assistant Professor Randall
Hughes has recently published
two papers. The first, in American
Naturalist, shows that the relatedness
of different seagrass genotypes is a
better predictor of seagrass biomass
than the number of genotypes.
The second, in Ecology, discusses
how the presence of a neighboring
plant species benefits the marsh
grass Spartina alterniflora buy reducing consumer pressure on it.
Assistant Professor David Kimbro’s work on the ability of marine
systems to respond to biological
invasions recently appeared in Ecology Letters.
Kimbro and colleagues synthesized two decades of experimental
data and drew conclusions about
how marine species do not always
respond the same way that terrestrial
species do when faced with invasive
species that compete for food and
space.
Professor Mark Patterson was
a co-author on a paper that was
presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and
Systems about methods for using
autonomous robots to survey for oil
that had washed ashore from the
Deepwater Horizon in Louisiana. Patterson’s graduate student, Jennifer
Elliott, presented a paper at the 12th
International Coral Reef Symposium
about remotely detecting phytoplankton blooms in Mauritius.
His work using both remotely operated and autonomous underwater
vehicles has also been recently published following presentations at the
2012 OCEANS conference.
Research related to the El Niñodriven collapse of eastern Pacific
coral reefs due to of Assistant
Professor Steve Vollmer and his
graduate student, David Combosch,
were published in Science.
Vollmer’s work on threatened Caribbean Acropora corals also appeared
in PLoS One.
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Grant Gives Elementary Students
Opportunity to Learn About Field Study
Alumnus Supports
Future Scientists
Sixth grade students from Lynn Public Schools learn how scientists conduct field surveys in local coastal habitats through a grant funded by the
Lincoln and Therese Filene Foundation.
Thanks to Len McNally, ‘72, MS ‘78 for five
years of supporting high school student scholarships for the MSC’s summer Coastal Ocean
Science Academy
Construction Underway at the Marine Science Center!
Paving the way for expanding numbers of faculty, students, major renovations to the Edwards building are resulting in 10 new
or upgraded research labs and improvements to office space. The aging seawater system is also being replaced, which will
reliably meet growing research and teaching needs.
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