2023

MOD Postdoc Spotlight: Yackar Mauzole

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment?
My background is in engineering which I studied after high school in France where I grew up. The system there is a bit different so it sort of worked out to me getting a master’s degree in France. Engineering is considered a very solid career path in France, and though I didn’t love every aspect of it I decided to specialize in something I did like, which is fluid mechanics. We had to do a research internship and that is how I ended up getting into oceanography. I then went to grad school in the US at University of Rhode Island and got another masters and my PhD there. Then I did a postdoc at Caltech/JPL and eventually joined MOD in 2019.

Today I’m using satellite data, in particular sea surface temperature, salinity and altimetry and ocean color, to study many different things in the ocean. Currently I’m looking at data from the Bay of Bengal which was the focus area of the project MISOBoB that MOD participated in and collected data for during a cruise in 2019. The Bay of Bengal which is an interesting region for many reasons, not the least the very strong monsoon and high population density. I focus on the smaller temporal and spatial scales (kilometers and days-weeks). What are the patterns of surface salinity? Are there filaments that are repeatedly formed? How does that impact the monsoon? It’s a really fun and intricate problem.  

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
There are always new things to learn and discover. You never run out of scientific questions surrounding the ocean. And the questions also vary depending on which ocean you study which is something I’ve realized from working in different places. I guess you could say that oceanography keeps you humble because you constantly get reminded of how much there is left to learn. 

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
Yes, that was never a question for me. I have always liked science and scored high on the exams throughout my school years. I’ve always known that I wanted to work in the scientific field. 

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
No, not when I was a kid. I’ve tried a lot of things throughout my life and if I liked something I steered in that direction and I think that is why I ended up in this field. I wouldn’t call myself an ocean lover. I get really seasick on boats so that is something I’ve decided not to do. But I like to do specific research and enjoy deep diving into data and finding things that other people might not have found yet. I don’t think that you have to be super passionate about something to be interested in it and enjoy working with it. For example, I am not one of those people who has always loved oceanography. I love the ocean, but it wasn’t a trajectory that was set in stone. And that’s something I’ve enjoyed with the American grad school system, that there are opportunities for people with a diverse background, unlike in France where you have to do oceanography from the start if that’s what you want to get into.

 What skills or abilities do you think are useful when getting into oceanography?
Humility, curiosity, patience, and open-mindedness. Humility is important, the ocean is so vast and there are just so many things we don’t know and it’s important to be able to admit that. Once we admit that we don’t know we can start thinking creatively about out how to measure and better understand things. I also think the ability to set boundaries and remember that your research is not your entire life. Detaching your worth as a human being from your output in academia is super important. The culture in academia is unfortunately not always very supportive of a healthy work-life balance and it takes work prioritizing your mental health and other things that are important to you. It’s not always easy, but I really think that you can make it work.

 
What does a typical workday look like for you? 
That depends. I primarily use satellite data and if there is a question that comes up about something like temperature patterns or surface currents in a region I spring into action. The first thing I do is that I go gather data from various sources online. The advantage with satellite data is that it’s relatively easy to get your hands on multiple months/years of data. I make some figures and try to connect what I see in them with what the literature is saying, what observations are suggesting, and discuss that with Jen and the others. Satellite data is neat because you can add many layers of things. Maybe the front you’re interested in doesn’t appear as clear in sea surface temperature, but it might really stand out in chlorophyll, so I typically play around with many different datasets to try to understand what I’m looking at. Whether I’m investigating a question purely from the satellite data perspective or if the question came from something that was seen in observation can vary, but regardless, my workday is typically a lot of coding!

What drew you to Scripps?
I think that for me it had a lot to do with the people. The MOD group is a fun and inspiring group of people that I was excited to work with, especially Jen. I think it is so important to seek out good coworkers and mentors in academia. It’s tough field and it’s easy to get burned out and discouraged, so to find good people who support you and believe in you is crucial.

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?  
Someone I very much look up to is Dr. Dawn Wright [editor’s note: Chief Scientist at ESRI]. I know from personal experience how hard it can be to be a black woman in oceanography and I can only imagine how much harder it must have been at the time she went through her PhD. When I’ve met her, I’m always struck by how kind of a person she is, she’s truly a bright shining light, and that is something I very much aspire to. Another scientist and human I look up to Dr. Amina Schartup who is an Assistant Professor at Scripps. She’s such a force of nature and always ready to give encouragement and no-bullshit advice.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I call myself a “dry oceanographer”. I study the ocean, but I’m not someone who enjoys being at sea at all. There are many types of oceanography, and though “oceanographer” very often gets mistaken for “marine biologist” for some reason, I’ve learned that oceanography is very popular at customs or immigration. Whenever I am renewing my visa or entering the US, the person I get to talk to looks at my papers and when they see it says “oceanographer” on there always ask “Oh, are our oceans ok?”. I typically answer “yeah, I’m working on it” and that usually gets me the stamp in my passport that I need. Somehow there seems to be a large percentage of people working in immigrations who are very keen on ocean sciences which is perhaps a bit unexpected but very nice to see!

 

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

NORSE 2023 - That's a wrap!

For the third year in a row, a group of MOD scientists, engineers and students ventured into the far north, braving the fickle beast that is the North Atlantic ocean in November. Equipped with various MOD in-house developed toys, and joined by fabulous colleagues from multiple different institutions, the science party was on a mission to investigate what happens to the upper ocean under strong forcing from wind and waves.

With the 2023 cruise just being done, that wraps up three years of fieldwork for the Office of Naval Research funded project NORSE – Northern Ocean Rapid Surface Evolution. Read on to hear about some highlights from this cruise. More on NORSE can be found here, there are also blogposts from the previous years’ cruises in 2021 and 2022 on the MOD blog, as well as a story for the Scripps Explorations dispatch series, all written by our graduate student Kerstin. Our fieldwork this year was also picked up by the San Diego Union Tribune that featured a story on our chief scientist Jen MacKinnon.

The NORSE 2023 science party

The NORSE 2023 science party was the largest yet, 30 scientists, engineers, and students, including two STEMSeas students. We all met up in a cold and snowy Tromso and boarded the Norwegian ice-breaker R/V Kronprins Haakon. After loading all the gear onboard, we quietly slipped out of the shelter of the archipelago and fjords one early arctic morning and set course towards the Lofoten Basin Eddy.

Thanks to the splitting of a northward current, the Lofoten Basin is enclosed by the Norwegian Atlantic Frontal Current and the Norwegian Atlantic Slope Current. The shedding of vortices by the slope current help make the Lofoten Basin a hotspot for temperature and vorticity in the Nordic Seas and help contribute to the local climate. Previous NORSE cruises have focused on a particular vortex in the basin, the Lofoten Basin Eddy, a well studied semi-permanent anticyclonic feature in which we’ve deployed multiple sets of surface drifters. These drifters are non-recovered, current tracking instruments that send back their data via gps and help us investigate energy transfer from the wind to the ocean when there is background vorticity present.

Drifter deployment

Glider recovery

Glider back on board

Then we headed further west towards our favorite volcano, Mt Beerenberg on the island of Jan Mayen, where most of the focus was during this year’s cruise. Jan Mayen sits on the intersection of multiple basins and is a meeting point of several currents and water masses which makes it a perfect place to study what happens to water of different temperature and salinity when they meet and the atmosphere exerts its forces on the ocean. In the waters around this isolated Norwegian Island we performed various acoustic experiments with hydrophones and sound sources, we deployed the MOD in-house autonomous profiler system the Wirewalker and did a lot of ship-based profiling with our turbulence sensor package the epsilometer as well as the CTD/oxygen/chlorophyll package.

DBASIS buoy

Wirewalker in the water

Wirewalker prep

Deployment

Other groups on the cruise had multiple instruments that went in and out of the water too, such as SWIFTs (drifting instruments that can measure waves and wind among other things) and gliders (autonomous underwater vessels that can be piloted to glide around and measure things like temperature, salinity and turbulence)

Small boat ops

SWIFT deployment

SWIFT deployment

We spent also two full days recovering the four moorings that we put out last year. They came back covered in basket stars.

1 of 4 moorings back on board

Basket stars

The North Atlantic was cooperative giving us almost flat seas for much of the first two weeks. However, the light was running out. At latitude 70°N we saw the sun set behind the horizon for the last time on November 20th, not to be seen again until late January. But just as things were seeming to be a little too picturesque and we started to wonder if we’d actually get to see some of that forcing from wind and waves that NORSE is about, things picked up and we spent most of Thanksgiving holed up on the most leeward side of Jan Mayen while the wind was howling a steady 70 mph outside and a thin layer of ice slowly built up on the Kronprins Haakon. We decorated the lab with paper turkeys and held a ship wide ping pong tournament in the helicopter hangar. The final was a real nail biter between Italy and Norway. And yes, the ship has a helicopter hangar with a ping pong table.

The running joke amongst seagoing oceanographers is that when you say you’re going on a “cruise” people immediately think you’re going on vacation, and you have to explain that it’s a “research cruise”. Well, with heated bathroom floors, a 9th floor observation deck with reclining chairs, a sauna, and a massage chair in the library, the Kronprins Haakon was one of those ships where three weeks of working long days on a research cruise could, at least sometimes, feel a little like a vacation. The abundance of pretty views didn’t hurt either.

Last sunrise

Last sunset

Jan Mayen post storm

Aurora Borealis

Once the skies cleared up and Jan Mayen was once again visible in the faint glow of daylight (coming from the sun below the horizon, but we take what we can get) we did some last minute profiling and then picked up our last assets from the water before we pointed the bow towards Tromso again. Once in port the science party managed to both prove themselves on the karaoke stage and jump into 5°C/40F water by the downtown sauna before heading home. A worthy ending to a successful cruise.

And that concludes three years of fieldwork for the NORSE project.
Now begins the work of turning all the terabytes of data collected over the past years into research papers that will help the scientific community better understand the upper ocean’s response to strong forcing and how that impacts thermohaline patters, currents, acoustics, and energy transfer from the atmosphere to the ocean, as well as how that might play out in a changing climate. Coming to an oceanographic conference/symposium/journal near you soon…

With that we sign off for the last time: NORSE over and out.

Jan Mayen

(Really, you think we’d leave you without a silly joke or two?)

- Why did the pirate put tape on the squid?
He was afraid it was kraken!

 

- What do you call a Viking that doesn’t eat fish?
A Norvegan.

All photos and text by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Student Spotlight: Kelley McBride

What is your background and what are you studying or working on at the moment? 
I got my bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island where I studied a little bit of everything, from coastal processes to robotics, acoustics, offshore renewable energy and more. When I graduated, I started working as a contractor for the Department of Defense specializing in acoustics and I really enjoyed the challenges associated with the study of underwater sound. However, I soon realized that I was way more intrigued by the study of the oceans from an interdisciplinary perspective, which is what brought me back to graduate school to study oceanography.

Right now, I’m working with professors Peter Franks and Jen MacKinnon and I’m sort of sitting between the biology and the physics. I get to use skills from my engineering background to study coastal physical processes in order to ask and answer biological questions. It’s a fun, interdisciplinary place to be, and since everything's connected in the ocean, it's exciting to be able to look at multiple perspectives and answer a wide range of questions. My research is a part of the Inner Shelf Dynamics Experiment. More specifically, I’m studying coastal transport patterns driven by the internal tide and wind-driven flows and how their variability directly impacts coastal benthic communities, such as the crabs and mussels you see along the shoreline. This research allows me to continuously learn and evolve as a scientist, which is exciting.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
For me, it's looking outside my office window every day and seeing the ocean - it is always different and there are so many questions you can ask to try to better understand it. I’m learning something new about the ocean every single day, and yet I’m continuously reminded of how little we know about it, which constantly motivates me. It’s a privilege to be working at Scripps and to be surrounded by so many amazing scientists and engineers working across so many different disciplines, but everyone’s work ties together which I think is incredible and inspiring.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer?
I always dreamt of working in science. I knew early on I was headed in the direction of becoming a scientist or engineer since I always loved math and physics in school. However, once I had an NSF internship studying sand tiger sharks and migratory patterns in the Delaware Bay, I knew I wanted to be an oceanographer and pursue ocean sciences. But I still sometimes have to pinch myself and take a step back and recognize that I am a scientist, and after all these years, I’m getting to do what I’ve always wanted.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
Yes, I would say my mom. She grew up in Newport, Rhode Island and she would always take my family there when we were kids. We spent a lot of time at the cliff walk and Second Beach watching the waves and the sea life, and it was always so amazing just how different the ocean was, between days and seasons, and even different parts of the coast. I just loved the salty water, the rhythm of tides and the sound of the waves - everything about it! So being able to study even just a part of that is amazing.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography?
I would say for science, regardless of what the field of science it is, being able to say “I don't know”, and not take that as a weakness is a very good approach. Being able to take “I don’t know” as encouragement to go find an answer and to continually evolve your skillset will serve you very well. There is SO much to learn in oceanography and you're never going to be able to have everything figured out. It can be overwhelming and there will be days that are hard. But then there will be days of discovery that are great, and those are such a high. Being able to persevere, making the most of the highs and not being afraid to ask for help during the lows, is an important skill to learn, too.

What does a typical workday look like for you?
Typically, my morning starts with a lot of heavy data analysis in Matlab, and coffee. I try to incorporate a little bit of writing every day, because the end goal of this is getting papers out the door and getting your dissertation together, so I try to hone that skill most days. But ultimately every day is different and can be scattered with meetings, lab meetings, seminars, defenses, talks over coffee, and more.

What drew you to Scripps?
Growing up, I always thought of Scripps as this faraway place where scientists, marine biologists and physicists did such amazing work. I grew up on the East Coast, so Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution] was right there and was very familiar, but there was something very interesting and unique about Scripps being on the Pacific Coast. The idea of learning about an entirely new coastline and ocean was appealing. Coming to Scripps provided all of that for me and introduced me to a whole new community of incredible people and research, it’s wonderful.

Is there a particular scientist/person/engineer/thing that inspires you?
I could definitely say “everyone here at Scripps”, I am truly inspired by the people that I surround myself with and I feel lucky to be here. But I think I would have to say my sister has inspired me the most throughout my life. She has always been an inspiring scientist and engineer who's encouraged me to pursue higher education. I really take a lot from the way she thinks about life and her career as well as the work that she does - she has so much passion and perseverance behind it, I’m lucky I have her to look up to.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you?
I am a huge pasta lover and make a lot of homemade pasta. Pasta is something that has become a big part of my time here at Scripps. On my weekends I often spend my time making various types of pasta - it's actually something that my advisor Peter Franks and I have in common and usually talk about at the end of our meetings. My favorite pasta shape is orecchiette. The name essentially means  “small ear” since it’s a little concaved circle. Pasta making is a great way to take a break from your work at the end of the day, I highly recommend it!

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD in the Gulf Stream

Ahoy from the R/V Armstrong!
The Scripps Multiscale Ocean Dynamics (MOD) team is at sea with Bill Hodgkiss’s acoustics group and Luc Lenain’s air-sea group (both SIO) aboard leg 3, led by MOD’s Matthew Alford and Gunnar Voet, of the Office of Naval Research-funded New England Seamounts Experiment (NESMA). The goals are to understand sound propagation in the ocean, and how the Gulf Stream interacts with seamounts, which stick up nearly two miles from the three-mile-deep seafloor in the region. The way they mix, create wakes, and generate internal gravity waves has implications for how the ocean transports heat and dissipates its energy.

The Task Force Ocean - Seamounts team. Chief Scientist Alford (back, with mask) came down with COVID on day one of the cruise and had just emerged after having remained isolated in his stateroom for 9 days. Also pictured are Evan Harris, Helen Dufel, Charlotte Bellerjeau, Nicole Couto, Gunnar Voet, Jeremy Roswell, Arnaud Le Boyer, Sara Goheen, Becca McConnell, Gabriela Chavez and Luke Colosi.

We, some of the MOD group, have now been out here for 17 days, having deployed two moorings and our MOD group’s fast CTD and epsilometer, deployed from our high-speed electric MOD winch. We conducted one of the highest-resolution surveys of the Gulf Stream ever done, showing the very strong currents of the Gulf Steam and the sharply sloping temperature surfaces on both sides. These strong lateral undersea fronts can trap internal gravity waves known as near-inertial waves at their edges, which can lead to turbulence.  

“Clark chart” (courtesy Jennifer Clark and Grace Jensen) showing the sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic on May 31, 2023.  The Gulf Stream brings warm water (red) from lower latitudes, transporting tens of millions of tons of water northward each second.  We are working atop the Atlantis II seamount, which is marked at about 38.5N, 63W.

Sure enough, our turbulence measurements along the same section confirm strong dissipation is occurring in those regions.  We’re currently redoing the survey at even higher resolution with our specialized “epsi-fish” profiler in order to investigate further.

Aerial photo (photo credit: Croy Carlin) of the R/V Armstrong and the MOD winch with our fast CTD instrument in the water ready to begin a profile.

The acoustics and air-sea groups have been very busy and successful as well - we will let them report on their achievements separately. In the next few days we will recover the Waveglider and one of our moorings before heading home. The other mooring will deliver data for another year before we do it all again next year and recover it as well.

The Gulf Stream is part of the ocean’s blood stream, and it feels very exciting to be taking its pulse with these specialized tools aboard such a capable vessel as the R/V Armstrong. We are so lucky and grateful to be here with the Captain and crew of this amazing vessel, who have welcomed us warmly into their home and helped us make sure our instruments have stayed functional for this long and challenging but very successful expedition.

Current speed with temperature contours measured with the fast CTD showing the strong eastward currents of the Gulf Stream and the steeply sloping temperature surfaces associated with it (black lines; 13 degrees is green and 15 degrees is magenta).

This figure shows turbulence (specifically, the logarithm of the thermal dissipation rate) measured with our microstructure instruments that are related to instabilities and trapped internal gravity waves within the Gulf Stream’s edges. The ticks at the top show the very high lateral resolution with which we were able to conduct the survey.

Want to read more on what MOD is up to at sea? Go give us a follow on Instagram or Twitter @mod_at_scripps. 

Written by Matthew Alford

MOD Student Spotlight: Ian Stokes

What is your background and what are you studying at the moment? 
My background is in physics. After finishing my undergraduate degree, I worked for a while as an electrical/mechanical engineer building electric pianos before I came back to grad school. Now I’m in my 4th year of the mechanical engineering PhD program at UCSD with Drew Lucas. With Drew as my advisor, my fluid dynamics specialization has more or less morphed into a degree in physical oceanography, and I’m very grateful for the experiences this has provided. At the moment, I am working on planning an observational experiment where we will use optical fibers to study the structure of shoaling internal waves on the inner shelf. I am also preparing a theory paper for submission that describes how nonlinear structure of the oceanic surface boundary layer impacts the power input from the atmosphere to the internal wave spectrum.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
It’s very rewarding to work with something I’m super passionate about. I’ve spent time in and around the ocean my whole life and most things I do revolve around it. Climate change is a pressing ‘do or die’ issue that our generation is going to have to figure out, and there is no doubt the ocean plays a huge role in all that. They say we know more about the moon than we do about the ocean. It is exciting to know there is so much left to learn! At the end of the day though, I am always thinking about how I am going to help figure out a solution to some part of this problem. I want to use my understanding of the ocean to help protect and preserve it. That keeps me interested and excited most of all.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
I was never one of those kids with their whole life planned out, but I’ve always loved building things, tinkering, and restoration projects. I learned analog circuitry through working on amplifiers and building my own musical effects pedals. During undergrad I was restoring an old analog piano, and at one point I bought some components from this Aussie dude. As it turned out his brother owned a custom vintage piano shop. We made friends and before long I ended up working for them as an engineer. Definitely not expected, but wouldn’t have it any different.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
I grew up on the coast in Virginia Beach and nearly everything in my life so far has been oriented around the ocean. I’m really into free diving, surfing, wind sports, (and now scuba thanks to ONR support for our upcoming experiment), the whole deal. The Atlantic will always have a special place in my heart. Southeast Virginia is the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay – a wild place from an oceanographic perspective. The conditions there are very different from San Diego, even the water is a different color. I guess I just couldn’t resist the call of that brownish green and murky Atlantic water…

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography?
A strong stomach is key for going out to sea! I’m very grateful I don’t get seasick. My hands on experience with electrical and mechanical systems has given me unique opportunities to do a lot of instrument development and fieldwork. I will say though, I definitely did myself a disservice by avoiding coding prior to grad school. Coding is a super useful skill. Now I view it for what it is – a high power calculator that can let you do whatever you want. Before though, any time spent behind a screen I avoided like the plague. Obviously, now as a grad student, a large percentage of my life is spent coding and writing. I’ve come to terms with that now, and troubleshooting a code is actually remarkably similar to troubleshooting an electrical system.

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
I would say that there is no typical workday, there's just so many different things I do, and it varies a lot between weeks and months. Right now, I’m doing a lot more writing since I’m trying to get some papers done. Inevitably some coding sneaks it’s way in there when I find new ways I want to present my results. With my experiment coming up this fall, spare thoughts often end up pondering my experimental design. The experiment will involve some scuba-deployed instrumentation, so we’ve been trying to get out on scuba weekly to maintain proficiency.

What drew you to Scripps? 
It was a bit of a lucky stumble actually. I tutored a lot between undergrad and grad school, tutoring is an awesome side-gig when you know math and physics. At the time, there was no upward mobility at the piano shop and I figured my academic skills were probably as sharp as they’d ever be, so I took the GRE. I applied to fluid dynamics programs at some UC’s and UCSD was the only one I got into (score!). From there, I got even luckier to end up working with Drew in the MOD group. I’m very grateful for our lab group and community, and feel super lucky to be a part of it.

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?
I think nature in general, and the ability to harness the forces of nature to one’s advantage is very inspiring. Pelicans are incredible creatures in this way. They use natural wind patterns to minimize flapping which is super cool on its own, but on top of that, they actually surf the updrafts that follow ocean swell! Super cool to watch. The first paper for my thesis was about this process, "wave-slope soaring," and it was a fun and challenging problem to solve! Boyan Slat's “The Ocean Cleanup” project also harnesses the forces of nature in a very clever way. They use the surface current patterns associated with ocean gyres to collect the waste of the pacific garbage patch, and more recently they are using natural effluent discharges to filter waste before it gets to the ocean in the first place – these examples of working with the flow are really cool. Nature is always going to win, so if you can be on the same team as nature that's how you’ll win too.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I am probably the most blood thirsty vegan out there! For a few years now, I’ve been on the hunter gatherer diet, aka vegan plus what you can catch yourself. Living in San Diego, the obvious place to turn is the ocean. Pacific pelagic fish like tuna, yellowtail, and mahi-mahi are extremely sustainable to hunt (for example, mahi mahi have a remarkably stable population and reach maturity in 4-5 months). These fish traverse the Southern California Bight in great numbers offshore in the summer months. The process of spearfishing has given me an enormous appreciation and respect for the food that goes on my table. To dive on a single breath, become a part of the ocean’s ecosystem, and assume the role of the apex predator that humans truly are, taps into a primal instinct that I’ve found few other activities will awaken. It’s beautiful, humbling, and empowering.

 

 

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Scientist Spotlight: Nicole Couto

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment? 
I did physics at UC Santa Barbara for my undergrad, but I sort of knew that theoretical physics wasn’t for me. I did a couple of internships in particle physics labs and I remember my classmates making fun of me when I’d take a paper outside to read. When I said I wanted to go to Antarctica one day, they thought that was the craziest thing they’ve ever heard! I ended up taking some earth science classes my senior year, including one on oceanography. I remember seeing pictures of people on boats and thinking “that’s their job – how do I get that job?”. After graduation I did a SEA semester and after that I knew that it was oceanography I wanted to do. However, during that trip I realized that there was so much more to oceanography than I realized, and I needed some more time to figure out which part of it I liked the most. Thus, I spent about a year working in a lab at UC Santa Cruz under a researcher who was part of the Long-Term Ecological Research Project at Palmer Station in Antarctica. I did a project looking at a at surface CO2 and O2 fluxes on the shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula. I later applied to graduate school with a bunch of different professors who were also part of that project, and I was lucky enough to get into Rutgers work with Oscar Schofield who led the phytoplankton component of the Palmer LTER. My work had a cool combo of biology and physics where we were looking at what physical factors in the ocean control phytoplankton distribution around Antarctica using gliders. My thesis was all about heat transport via eddies on the Antarctic shelf. When I was looking for postdocs focused on the polar regions I came across a great website that Jen and Matthew had set up for their ArcticMix project. I applied and here we are.

Today I still feel a pull towards the polar regions, but I’ve also sort of ended up in the turbulence world. I do a lot of work on bottom boundary layer dynamics and mixing, for example as part of the BLT [Boundary Layer Turbulence] and TLC [Turbulence in La Jolla Canyon] projects. I’ve also gotten funded for a project in Antarctica looking at turbulence, so it sort of feels like I’ve come full circle.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
Getting to go sea is definitely a huge draw for me. I like the break from all the screen time that is part of our normal day-to-day routine and getting to tinker with things. Plus, I really love the camaraderie that comes with hanging out with your coworkers 24/7. We typically end up getting a bit loopy and there are often a lot of fun pranks and inside jokes. I’m also excited by the thought that there are still so many things about the ocean that we don’t understand particularly well. Yet these things are super relevant and important for climate models and for us to understand what will happen to the ocean in a changing climate. That helps me stay motivated on the days I’m just staring at my screen all day struggling with some seemingly insignificant piece of analysis.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist? 
Yes, I think so. Both of my parents are scientists, biochemists, and it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I realized that I actually didn’t have to get a PhD and went through a phase of saying “I’m not getting a PhD”. But I think I always assumed I’d eventually end up in science somehow. I was very into astronomy for a while. Architecture was something else that called me for a while, in elementary school I was always drawing blueprints of houses. But math and science were always what attracted me the most.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
I just love the ocean. When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time by the sea in Portugal where my dad is from. I just loved getting tossed around by the waves. We also spent time at Cape Cod near where my mom is from. It feels like a completely different ocean, on the Bayside it feels like you can walk out for a mile and still be only knee deep.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography?
I think a lot about something that one of my advisors said to me when I was studying for my qualifying exam in grad school. I remember, we were passing each other in the hallway, and he was asking me how it was going, and I said with frustration: “It’s hard, I feel like I don't know anything!” To which he replied: “great, that means you're studying hard enough”. I think that there are a lot of times in this job where you get really stuck, and it is so easy to feel defeated, thinking you’re not cut out for it. But it's important to remember that you're not going to be an expert on everything. If you’re interested and curious enough to keep going, eventually you’ll figure something out. You’ll learn something and it is rewarding, but there will always be so much more that you’ll never know and that is part of what makes it exciting. Don’t be afraid to ask others for help and remember to every now and again check in on how far you’ve come. It’s sometimes easy to lose track of your own progress when you get stuck in your research. Being an oceanographer can also mean a lot of not-so-glamorous computer work on your own in between the thrills of fieldwork. That is why I think it is also important to practice reaching out and connect with your peers, that helps me stay motivated and feel inspired.

The last thing I’ll say is that a little bit of perseverance and discipline also helps a lot on those days you feel frustrated. “It is ok to suck, but it is not ok to skip” is something I heard once and keep reminding myself of. Some days you won’t feel like it, but you can’t just wait for inspiration to strike and for you to “feel ready”. You have to set yourself up for it by putting in the hours, that’s how you have a chance at actually finding flow in your coding or writing.

What does your typical workday look like? 
I sit down at my desk and wait for inspiration to come? Actually, on the days I’m on land I really try to stick to a routine where I use my mornings for writing and data wrangling because that’s when I’m at peak brain energy. I try to save afternoons for meetings or doing things in the lab. If I’m at sea it’s of course different, then you’re typically on for 12h manning the profiling winch or doing some other sampling, and then there’s data visualization etcetera. I enjoy that slightly different flow of your day when you’re at sea, it’s very stripped down to the essentials.

What drew you to Scripps? 
I think that when I was looking for postdocs, I was mostly looking for good people that I wanted to work with, and the location didn’t necessarily matter that much. But when I got here, I realized that I had lucked out because Scripps, and the MOD lab in particular, is not only full of so many great people, but there were also so many cool projects. I can do whatever suits my fancy really. I can tinker with instruments and learn from the engineers, and everyone is so fun and helpful. It’s a pretty amazing place to work.

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?
My dad has always really inspired me. He is always so curious and at the same time incredibly disciplined. He is a biochemist who is also really into astrophysics, he built a telescope when we were kids and like taught us all about stars, and whenever I go home, I'll find him watching YouTube videos about quantum physics or a myriad of other topics. But more importantly, he’s a very well-rounded person, for example, he plays the piano and swims almost every day. That balance between being very professional and good at what you do for work, and still have a lot of other interests and generally be a good human being, that is inspiring to me.

 Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I really love to sing. I'm still very nervous singing around other people but I sing and play the guitar. My dad played a lot of classical and jazz piano when I was growing up, so I’ve sort of always been surrounded by music. And if you ever were to see me driving in my car on the freeway belting songs, that's probably the truest version of me. Typically, it’s something by Sara Bareilles, lots of long notes that are fun to hold.

 

 

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Student Spotlight: Jake DeFilippis

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment? 
I went to UC Santa Cruz where I got my undergraduate degree in physics and computer science. My main interest was fluid dynamics which involves a lot of computer programming, hence the combination. After graduation, I got a job as a software engineer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center working with control systems. Though particle physics wasn’t my main interest it was a pretty sweet gig where I got to tinker and learn a lot about both the science and engineering aspects. Eventually, I realized that I was more interested in ocean rather than particle physics, so I decided to go back to graduate school. Now I’m in my 5th year in the Applied Ocean Sciences program working with Bruce Cornuelle and Drew Lucas on underwater acoustics. My main research focus is ocean acoustic tomography which is all about how we can remotely sense ocean variables such as temperature or salinity, using sound energy. There is a long history of this research at Scripps dating back all the way to Walter Munk sending very powerful sound signals across the earth traveling through multiple ocean basins and inferring information about the ocean on a basin scale. I, however, look at smaller-scale oceanography, 10 meters or less, typically referred to as “fine structure”. The upper part of the ocean is very inhomogeneous due to its proximity to the surface. There are temperature and salinity sharp gradients due to the layering and mixing in the ocean. These features affect the sound speed of water which in turn affects the acoustic propagation in the ocean and give rise to various strange patterns in the received acoustic transmissions, thus my work involves a lot of signal processing and some acoustic modeling too.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
I get really excited about the discovery part of my work. Scripps is such a cool place where many people are truly able to got out to sea and collect data and discover something new. That allows us to really become the experts at what we do, especially at the graduate school level. No one else is looking at the problems to the degree that you’ll look at them, sometimes not even your advisors because they are busy with their own world, and as a graduate student doing most of the groundwork, you’re kind of on the very edge of it all, and that gives my work purpose.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist? 
No, I don't think so. I was thinking I'd be an inventor like Thomas Edison whom I really admired. I spent a lot of time swimming as a kid which can be rather mundane mentally, so I was always doing thought experiments about how to design things like submersibles or floating skateboards. Though I guess that is what I ended up doing, a bit of ping-pong between engineering and science where the lines definitely get blurred at times, it is kind of like being an inventor.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
As a kid, I lived 15 minutes away from the beach and I grew up a surfer, I did beach camp in the summer, and I was a junior lifeguard. I think I’ve always been enamored with the ocean. Sometimes I wonder if it was the right choice to have that be my career, you know how they say one should separate your career and your hobbies, but I also feel very privileged to be able to surf every day here. I work from home most days and it does drive me a little bit crazy at times. I definitely feel like getting in the ocean centers me, so I have to come into campus every once in a while.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography? 
I think that a strong math and science background will serve you well, a fundamental understanding of physics helps a lot. But you also need to be a bit of a self-starter. Your advisors are a resource and there are a lot of helping hands around, butyou have to know how to reach out for help and use the available resources. For my path through graduate school, I’ve also had good use of more practical skills like knowing how to solder, and for example, I work on cars.  Those types of skills definitely have helped me fix things that break while at sea. A decent understanding of computer systems that I gathered in my previous degree and work has also been useful, but I don’t think it’s a requirement.

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
I'm pretty much a nine-to-five kind of guy. Sometimes it is longer and sometimes it’s shorter, but I like trying to stick to a schedule to know that I’m putting in the hours. That was actually the best advice I got as an undergraduate, someone told me to “treat school like a job”. It might be a strange job, but that is the best way to keep going. Graduate school is such a marathon and sometimes you’re deep in the weeds questioning if you’re even making any progress, but if you put in the hours, you can at least trust you’re doing the work that will eventually accumulate to a breakthrough of some sort.

What drew you to study at Scripps? 
Many things, beyond it having a reputation for being a great institution where I knew I’d find something fun to work with,it was also close to my support system and family which has actually been really important during my graduate school experience. And yeah, having the beach and the surf right outside your office door isn’t too bad either.  

Is there a particular scientist/person/something that inspires you?
I think I’d have to answer Ernest Shackleton. Ever since I read his book “South” I’ve been amazed at his dogged determination to survive and save his crew when their ship got stuck in the Antarctic sea ice for over a year. That refusal to give up despite extreme circumstances puts me put things in perspective when I feel like I’m having a hard time with my work. I guess they named their ship “Endurance” for a good reason…

 Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
The lab I used to work for was a Slovenian-owned company, or rather they were contractors for the lab, but working for them I got to go live in Slovenia for 3 months. That was a really great time and it’s a very beautiful country. They have a tiny bit of coastline along the Mediterranean and lots of wonderful mountains. The language is very complex, but luckily most people speak some English and the people are very friendly.

 

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

 

MOD Engineer Spotlight: Isabella Franco

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment? 
I went to UCSD for my undergrad in mechanical engineering and graduated right before the pandemic. Thankfully I got a job right around that time too, but I had barely started when they sent us all home to work remotely “just for two weeks”, but we all know how that turned out. That job was in the oil and gas industry, which I was already hesitant about working in but had figured it was a good place to get some engineering experience, but it confirmed for me that it wasn’t really the field I wanted to be in for the rest of my life. It was also a huge company where you felt like a tiny cog in a big machine. Hence, after a little while I started thinking about what I’d rather do and thought back to a class I took at UCSD on marine instruments and sensor development with Todd Martz which I really enjoyed. I remember thinking “hmm, wonder if there are any engineering jobs where I get to do that” and looked at the Scripps job postings site and realized that yes, you can get to do cutting edge research and development, work on climate related questions, and travel, which checks all the boxes for me. I applied for a job and joined the MOD lab in early 2022.

Currently I’m the most junior engineer in the group, so I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can from the other engineers as I work on projects. I did a lot of mechanical work on the newest version of the T-PADS and right now I'm working on the level wind for the Beyster winch. I also do a lot of work on our various probes (temperature and microstructure). I am primarily a mechanical engineer, but I appreciate all the opportunities within the group to learn and practice skills from other engineering disciplines as well.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
The fieldwork is one of the things I find most exciting about my job. To actually be able to use the things that you've designed, tested and made and go out there and collect data to help better understand our oceans, that is very cool to me. I've only done a few cruises, but so far I am liking it a lot.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be an engineer? 
Both yes and no. There were a lot of things that I wanted to do when I was a kid. I specifically remember in second grade when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I answered “paleontologist” (I had to learn how to spell “paleontologist”). I had watched a lot of History Channel and Discovery Channel and just thought that seemed like the coolest job. At some point I wanted to be an inventor, and then an artist, and briefly a marine biologist, but “engineer” didn’t really occur to me until I joined a robotics club in high school. I like engineering because it's a good amount of technical thinking, but also you get to be creative, especially in an R&D job which is kind of perfect. I also get to be around all of the science in this group and learn so many cool things!

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to work with the ocean? 
I think I’ve always felt close to the ocean. I grew up a five minute walk from the beach in Santa Barbara. I did a lot of tide pooling and paddleboarding growing up, and volunteered at the aquarium that is on the pier back home. I remember the section on oceanographic instruments, you could take samples from the seafloor which was fun, and I guess that inspired me even if I didn’t know it then.

 What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography or becoming a member of the engineering development team? 
I think creativity is a good thing to develop and nurture. But also, being comfortable asking good questions and making use of the tremendous amount of experience and knowledge that exists in the lab–people here are really smart and know so much. Having some persistence and not giving up is another one; being able to return to an engineering problem and think about it in a different way with new input is useful.

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
It's different day-to-day which is nice. Sometimes I'll be doing CAD the whole day, other days I will be machining or soldering something. Some days I just putter around the lab organizing things and lending a hand with whatever is happening that day. Then there are the fieldwork days where you're on deck profiling for 12 hours straight. The variety is fun! I like the design work a lot, but I really enjoy being able to tinker with physical things too. I once spent a summer working in a machine shop, and as much as I enjoyed that, I also think it's very nice to have some variety and be able to bring in the creative aspect. It is hard to come by though, that kind of job where you can combine both things, and I feel very lucky.

What drew you to Scripps? 
I think it was just the perfect set of circumstances. As I mentioned I took a class here and got a taste of what goes on at Scripps, plus I was looking to get out of the job I was in and wanted to stay in San Diego.

Is there a particular person/something that inspires you?
Picking just one person is hard! I feel like I could say that all of my coworkers in the lab inspire me because everyone is just super intelligent and creative. But I guess I’d have to say my dad too. He created his own business that manages energy controls for large buildings, like regulating lighting and HVAC, to make them more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. I think it’s amazing that he decided to do something that makes the world a little better and also can navigate running a business et cetera, and it has been inspiring to see.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
Some people may already know this, but I'm very interested in native plants and ecology. I’m far from a professional biologist or botanist, but I’m still doing my best to learn about all the native plants that are around this part of the country. My mom works at a plant nursery so this interest of mine kind of came from her. I enjoy camping and going on hikes, and just being out in nature. Looking for and recognizing native plants is really exciting, especially when observing them throughout different seasons and learning how they function within an ecosystem. One of my favorite native plants is lupine—there’s so many different species within the genus, with some hyperlocal species that only appear in one county within California. They’re really pretty, with huge spikes of colorful flowers, often bright purple or blue (and they’re also a big hit with a bunch of different species of moths). There are even some that are currently blooming along the freeway exit on my commute home!


Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Scientist Spotlight: Amy Waterhouse

What is your background and what are you working on now?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a marine biologist, like many people who grew up in British Columbia I suppose. Then I went to university and realized that I didn't want to take any more biology classes but I liked physics, so I did my undergrad in physics at University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. During that time, I worked as an intern at a particle accelerator, which was cool, but at the same time I found it way too esoteric. I like things that I can see and touch and understand through those kind of observations. I ended up doing a summer internship with one of the physical oceanographers at UBC and got to go on a research cruise which was so much fun. There were orcas jumping and we were studying internal waves, and I really enjoyed it. After that I decided to do my masters in physical oceanography which is amazing because I never considered that I’d go to grad school. Getting a PhD was also never part of my plan. Instead, I ended up working for environmental consulting companies in Vancouver that were particularly focused on the mining industry. I figured that even although I don't necessarily agree with a lot of what mining companies do, if I am somebody who is educated I can make a difference from the inside.

One of the projects I worked on was based in Papua New Guinea. Because the islands there have these very steep mountain slopes, they can't put the mine tailings on land and the only place they can go is in the ocean. When you mine for gold you use all sorts of harsh chemicals, cyanide for example, and the leftover slurry containing all sorts of awful things gets pumped into the ocean below the thermocline. I was sitting in my office in Vancouver looking at historical data and picking the depths at which these things were going to be released at. When I eventually got to go to Papua New Guinea, this beautiful island surrounded by coral reefs and with indigenous communities that are mostly subsistence fishers whose main source of food and income would be negatively impacted by a big release of slurry from the mines, I realized that I couldn’t keep working for the mining companies anymore. I decided to get my PhD and ended up going to graduate school in Florida. 

My approach to science back then was, and still to this day is, that I’d be happy to work on almost anything if I’m surrounded by nice people. Luckily, I found a great PhD advisor and I worked on coastal inlets for my PhD which involved lots of fun fieldwork. Later I applied for a postdoc at SIO and was lucky to get to work with Jen MacKinnon on a cool project that had direct implications for helping us understand climate change and the role ocean mixing plays in that.

Today my main interest is looking at where the coast meets the deep ocean and how energy and heat, and many other kinds of things are fluxed in between those two regions. The continental slopes are an interesting area because you have things happening in the remote ocean, like big internal waves moving around and coming and hitting the slope. But do they make it on to the shelf before they lose all their energy? Do they interact with the stuff that is coming from the coastal areas? And what are the small-scale processes that drive energy or heat flux in these regions? The next bigger project I’m part of will be studying internal waves near the equator. 

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
There are two things, quite different ones. One is working with nice people that are both intellectually stimulating but also fun to hang out with, luckily there are many of those at Scripps! The other one is how we can make small steps to help improve what we know about the ocean environment and climate change. Sometimes the small steps don’t always feel motivating, it can be hard to see the small stuff having an impact, but in those times, it is the friendly people that I work with that keep me going.

Post shift soak with fellow MOD members

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist?
No no, for a long time I wanted to be a veterinarian. I even volunteered at a veterinary hospital for a while, but then I realized that whenever they did surgery I had to go to the bathroom because I would get all clammy so that career probably wasn’t for me... I don't think I expected to be a scientist actually. I definitely did not expect to go to grad school at least. When I was in college, I used to have a rough “6-month plan” ahead, but beyond that it was mostly unknown. It turned out pretty ok though.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
Yes! Growing up in British Columbia, where you're right on the ocean all the time, no doubt had an impact. My dad would take us sailing to these beautiful fjords, we went canoeing, and I would spend all summer in Vancouver playing in the ocean with my friends. I’ve always felt very connected to the ocean, and I think that was a big driver of how I ended up here. During my time in grad school in Florida I lived in a small place right in the middle of the state, and it was the first time I had lived away from the ocean. It felt very weird. I did not feel like a complete person for the longest time.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when getting into oceanography or academia in general?
Flexibility is one big thing. I remember one of my advisors telling me that early on and I really agree. When you go out and measure things in the ocean you often have one idea of what you're going to measure, but then you get there and you put all the instruments in the water and you go “hmm, that was unexpected”. To be able to be flexible and adapt to new data, new people, new situations and learn to trust that you’ll figure it out regardless, that is a good skill. Being curious is another useful thing, but I also don’t think that you’ll feel curious about your work all the time, every single day. Sometimes things are just a bit of a slog, and you’ll have to figure out how to get through it.

What does a typical workday look like for you?
One of the things that keep me excited about coming to work is interacting with people. I could easily work from home in front of my computer all day, but I’ve realized I need that social aspect too and that’s why I usually try to meet someone for coffee or for lunch most days a week. My days are typically spent doing science about half the time, and the rest goes into project meetings, proposal writing, committee meetings and other logistical stuff. I’m also always keen to grow my skillset in general, for example I’ve been trying to learn Python for the past year which has been a fun challenge.

What drew you to Scripps? 
During my PhD I worked with a professor at Scripps on a project. His office was in the Coastal Studies Building right down by the pier and I got to come to La Jolla and spend a month here and I thought “wow, this is amazing!”. I did my PhD at a very small university where not that many people were studying the ocean, and coming to Scripps I couldn’t believe how many people were here all sitting around doing oceanography! That, and getting to work on the postdoc project together with Jen were my two motivations. She is awesome, and the project was fun and definitely outside of what I had done for my PhD, which was exciting.

Ben and Amy

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?
Well, I can pick two people. One of them is Jen because she loves her job like no one I've ever met. The awareness with which she interacts with people, colleagues and students alike, and the way she approaches science is amazing. The other person would be my partner Ben. He is so creative, detail oriented and good at making things. He reminds me that there is a lot of benefit to  mindfully thinking things through! Recently when we were building a table for our deck outside I went “ok, let’s just make it!” while Ben inspired us to really think about a clever design, getting the angles right and what the right materials would be. He does that in a way that is not at all my default, so I really appreciate that and find it inspiring and aspirational. We also make a good team that way!  

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I led a past life where I used to spend every waking second outside of work playing ultimate frisbee. When I was in college, I played on the university team and the Vancouver women’s City team and actually went to the World Championship in Hawaii representing Canada one year. But when I turned 27, I just stopped and haven’t played much since, even though I still have many friends from those days who still play. My highlight would be playing at the College Nationals representing UBC in Boston on a team full of my super close friends.

Written by Kerstin Bergentz