My story
My mom tells me I wanted to study marine life since I was 3 years old. That was it. It was all I talked about since the time I could form sentences. Of course, at the age of 7 that meant being a dolphin trainer. Which evolved into a desire to study the “cognitive abilities of marine mammals in captivity” by the time I was in high school, a thought stimulated by taking an Advance Placement Psychology course. At any rate, I knew I needed to leave my land-locked home in Wisconsin to pursue my dreams and I enrolled at Jacksonville University where I received my Bachelor of Science in Marine Science. During the fall of my sophomore year, I began volunteering for a professor assisting with bottlenose dolphin surveys on the St. John’s River. I quickly realized that doing research on wild populations was much more fitting for me. I wanted more field experience and started filling out applications for marine mammal internships across the country. That summer I landed my dream internship working on a maternal investment study on Steller Sea Lions in Seward, Alaska. The researchers I was working with wanted to gain a better understanding of how different strategies of rearing pups affected survival. My job was to sit at a remote operating station with a live video feed and record every birth and mating event that occurred during my shift. I left that summer with ambivalent feelings. I fell in love with Alaska. It’s mountains, glaciers, rocky coasts, hearty people and abundant megafauna. Tears welled up in my eyes as I sat dreading the boarding call in the Anchorage airport. I wanted to turn and run. Yet at the same time, I felt that the type of work I was doing wasn’t quite right for me. It was too sedentary, too removed.
The following summer I found myself on a different jagged coastline—Bar Harbor, Maine. I was interning for a woman working on her PhD. observing humpback whale distributions and relationships. I worked aboard whale watching vessels collecting data on the whales we saw, assisted in boat-based surveys, conducted land-based surveys from a remote lighthouse stationed offshore and began volunteering for the local stranding network. It was here that I discovered a newfound passion. Many of the stranding calls were about deceased animals and it was the responsibility of the stranding network to investigate why this animal washed up dead. They call these investigations necropsies. I had no idea I would be so interested in what can be learned from the death of these animals that I took such great joy in observing while live. I found myself independently researching the topic whereupon I stumbled across a paper titled, “The reproductive biology of seals.” The woman that authored that manuscript is now my academic advisor.
I can’t say exactly how I came up with my thesis project. I knew I wanted to study reproductive biology and from the moment the word came out of my advisor’s mouth I was set on walruses. I spent a semester living in Fairbanks taking courses designed for the Resilience and Adaptation Program for which I was a fellow. Though short-lived, my time in Fairbanks was well spent. I connected with the Alaska Museum of the North located on campus and discovered that they held the world’s largest collection of walrus ovaries (how convenient)! My project snowballed from there.
My project has 2 chapters. One that looks at the big picture-how has female walrus reproduction changed in the past 40 years? And the other zooms in to observe reproduction on a fine scale, measuring lipids and hormones in ovarian tissue. Both chapters have one thing in common—they observe the mother walrus. It is a mixing of history (old, old ovaries and techniques) and cutting edge research (endocrinological work on walrus tissues…it’s never been done!). I’m glad you’re here to join me on my journey studying the motherhood of one of the strangest and mysterious creatures on our planet.
The following summer I found myself on a different jagged coastline—Bar Harbor, Maine. I was interning for a woman working on her PhD. observing humpback whale distributions and relationships. I worked aboard whale watching vessels collecting data on the whales we saw, assisted in boat-based surveys, conducted land-based surveys from a remote lighthouse stationed offshore and began volunteering for the local stranding network. It was here that I discovered a newfound passion. Many of the stranding calls were about deceased animals and it was the responsibility of the stranding network to investigate why this animal washed up dead. They call these investigations necropsies. I had no idea I would be so interested in what can be learned from the death of these animals that I took such great joy in observing while live. I found myself independently researching the topic whereupon I stumbled across a paper titled, “The reproductive biology of seals.” The woman that authored that manuscript is now my academic advisor.
I can’t say exactly how I came up with my thesis project. I knew I wanted to study reproductive biology and from the moment the word came out of my advisor’s mouth I was set on walruses. I spent a semester living in Fairbanks taking courses designed for the Resilience and Adaptation Program for which I was a fellow. Though short-lived, my time in Fairbanks was well spent. I connected with the Alaska Museum of the North located on campus and discovered that they held the world’s largest collection of walrus ovaries (how convenient)! My project snowballed from there.
My project has 2 chapters. One that looks at the big picture-how has female walrus reproduction changed in the past 40 years? And the other zooms in to observe reproduction on a fine scale, measuring lipids and hormones in ovarian tissue. Both chapters have one thing in common—they observe the mother walrus. It is a mixing of history (old, old ovaries and techniques) and cutting edge research (endocrinological work on walrus tissues…it’s never been done!). I’m glad you’re here to join me on my journey studying the motherhood of one of the strangest and mysterious creatures on our planet.