Fellowship Experiences

Daytona Beach, 2011: I was at the biennial conference of a scientific society, the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation. It was my first year in the United States and my first public talk in English. I remember standing on the stage, looking out at a room full of people; they all knew more about zooplankton and spoke better English than I did. Although I used to be a debate team captain and have won awards in speech contests — in Mandarin — I panicked and my brain went blank. I stumbled through my presentation so badly that even I didn’t understand what I was talking about.

It was a typical summer afternoon back in June 2015 on Solomons Island, home to the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. I was sitting on the front porch of my office building, reading a book about menhaden, when I looked up. I noticed Ph.D. student Suzan Shahrestani jaunting across the yard towards our pier. When I asked what she doing, she said she was about to conduct her “jellywalk.”

This is the second of two dispatches by Sophie Caradine-Taber, who joined an Arctic research cruise through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program run by Maryland Sea Grant.  |  Today we encountered sea ice! There was talk that we might not see much sea ice this year, because sea ice melt has been high in recent years, so I am glad to see it. The ice floes are small but large enough to support large marine mammals, and today we saw seven walruses!

This is the first dispatch by Sophie Caradine-Taber, who joined a research cruise through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program run by Maryland Sea Grant.  |  I am spending this summer pursuing an unusual opportunity: spending two weeks aboard a research ship helping with research in the Arctic!

When I introduce myself as an environmental anthropologist, there’s often a pause followed by a look of confusion and then finally, “You’re a what?”