Student Spotlight
Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) graduate student Abby Lucas recounts her path to collecting environmental DNA samples in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The M.S. IBD program is a joint program with SCSU, and collaborates to leverage faculty expertise across two campuses (WCSU and SCSU).
We set out aboard the R/V Connecticut toward the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This is the only Marine National Monument in the Atlantic. Scientists from NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University of Connecticut, and Mystic Aquarium partnered to study this area over time. They use multiple methods to measure biodiversity, how animals interact with living and nonliving members of the ecosystem, and community changes over time. The chief scientist of this expedition, Peter Auster from the University of Connecticut, describes the monument as an ocean wilderness, and it is teeming with marine life.
