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The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography presents the Ruth Patrick Award each year to a scientist whose research leads to the identification, analysis and/or solution of important environmental problems. ASLO is pleased to award the 2020 Ruth Patrick Award to Jean-Pierre Gattuso for his leadership in, and commitment to, addressing ocean acidification. This acidification is due to increasing carbon dioxide in marine waters driven by fossil fuel emissions and represents a major threat to marine biodiversity. Dr. Gattuso’s research is providing the scientific basis and best practices to advance experimental research and solutions to solve this important challenge. Gattuso is CNRS Senior Research Scientist at Sorbonne University and the Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations. The award will be presented at the ASLO- SFS Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin in June 2020.

Gattuso is a leading researcher of ocean acidification (OA), with more than 100 publications spanning habitats and organisms including coral reefs, viruses, bacteria, phytoplankton, corals, mollusks and fish, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean and the tropics, as well as developing techniques and standardizing protocols for OA research. He has led numerous international working groups, including serving as the Scientific Coordinator of Europe’s first multi-investigator project on ocean acidification: EPOCA (European Project on Ocean Acidification).

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Arctic Council COP25 side event on ocean acidification was a call for action

Published 18 December 2019 Web sites and blogs Leave a Comment

The Arctic is experiencing some of the fastest rates of ocean acidification with potentially severe implications for the ecosystem and communities dependent on these. To raise awareness on acidifying waters and to bring state-of-the-art knowledge on the issue to a global arena, the Arctic Council organized a side event “All aboard! Tackling polar ocean acidification” at the COP25 in Madrid.

The side event was led by the Icelandic Chairmanship, organized in cooperation with the Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) Working Group, and hosted in the Cryosphere Pavilion. It brought together leading international acidification experts for a one and a half hour briefing on the chemical, biological, and socio-economic impacts of acidifying waters in the North – and what can be done to tackle the issue.

Iceland’s Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, HE. Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson, opened the side event and highlighted his country’s close ties to its surrounding waters. “Iceland takes any changes in the marine environment very seriously. Fisheries are a main pillar of Iceland’s economy. So, any threats to the Arctic marine ecosystem is of concern to Icelandic society”, he stated in his opening.

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Small AND mighty: getting the right messages to the right ears

Published 16 December 2019 Web sites and blogs Leave a Comment

Melissa McCutcheon reflects on her internship with Ocean Conservancy’s Ocean Acidification program

Melissa McCutcheon is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Coastal and Marine System Science program at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She has always felt a special connection with the ocean and has spent more than eight years studying marine science on the Virginia and Texas coasts.

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Meet the researcher: Samantha Siedlecki, Marine Sciences

Published 21 November 2019 Web sites and blogs Leave a Comment

When Samantha Siedlecki was a young girl in land-locked Chicago, she would go on family vacations to the beach, excursions that gave her a chance to play in the waves, build sandcastles, watch crabs, and fall in love with the ocean.

In high school, Siedlecki worked as a volunteer at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. As her fascination with the ocean grew, she began looking into college programs in marine sciences.

“I was always fascinated by what was going on in the ocean,” says Siedlecki, who received her bachelor’s degree in marine sciences with a concentration in marine geology from Eckerd College and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

“In grad school I mostly focused on theoretical questions, but real-world applications of my questions required less-idealized approaches,” Siedlecki says. “I wanted to learn about more realistic simulations in my post-doc work.”

Now an assistant professor of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut, Siedlecki spearheads research on coastal environments. She recently received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop a regional model of ocean acidification for the East Coast.

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