Vantuna Research Group at Occidental College

@vrgoxy.bsky.social

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Researching the marine environment of Southern & Baja California since 1966. Photos and content by J. Williams, except when otherwise noted.

https://www.oxy.edu/vrg

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Just found this photo on my computer again after many years. From an armrest on a chair near the Gulf of California at Camp Archelon, Bahia de Los Angeles, BC, Mexico, circa 2004. 🧪🌎🦑 I've always found it comforting and always wanted it to be how everyone felt about young scientists and their work.

Any time this comes up, I think: huh, maybe I *should* write that paper with those co-authors

Recently, I was peer reviewing a paper, and it cited one of my papers. Except... it wasn't anything I had written. The title sounds like something I'd write. It included coauthors I work with, and was in a journal I've published in. But it wasn't real. AI is not good for science.

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We are coming into the final days of this auction! If you want an original gyotaku from one of the rarest fish in the sea, you still have time to bid! Proceeds benefit the Department of Ichthyology at the museum.

Looking to give back to some moms this #MothersDay? Now you have an exclusive opportunity to bid on one of five original Gyotaku Pacific Footballfish Rubbings by world-renowned artist Dwight Hwang: bit.ly/NHMMDA24

Happy Earth Day! 🌎🐟🧪🦑 About to submit our Year 3 Report for Palos Verdes Reef. I'll give you a sneak peak at how the restoration reef is doing. In short: Incredibly well. Figures show biotic benthic cover and fish biomass on the new reef modules, by year. Construction was in 2020.

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And when I wake up, energized by dreams of colorful fish, I roll out of bed to see my father’s eyes looking back at me in the bathroom mirror. I promise him, just as he promised his father, “Let’s go make some good.” www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/marian...

After #OSM24, we stuck around New Orleans for a bit. Did a tour of the Honey Island Swamp and West Pearl River. Why did nobody tell me that the swamp is kinda gorgeous? And littered with raccoons?? 🌎

Just realized #OSM24 talks are scheduled for 10 mins instead of 15. Doesn't say much for my reading comprehension. But if you'd like to see me talk really fast about how EMF from submarine power cables affects crab behavior, I present at 8:50a in Room 217-219 OT41B: Offshore Renewable Energy 🧪🦑🦀

“But sharks and rays are separated by about 300 million years of evolution - about as much as time when the ancestors from humans diverged from the ancestors of snakes, which means a shark knocking up a stingray is about as likely as a human knocking up a snake." - Dr. Noah Bressman 👨‍🍳

New by me: No, a shark did not (and cannot) get a stingray pregnant, despite what you read in news stories this week. But what really happened is really neat! www.southernfriedscience.com/no-a-shark-d... 🧪 🦑

No, a shark did not get a stingray pregnant. But what really happened is pretty cool!www.southernfriedscience.com A North Carolina aquarium has reported that a round stingray named Charlotte, the only member of her species living in her tank, is pregnant. An animal becoming pregnant without a mate (and in this…

In early May, I will be attending a conference (GeoHab 2024) in Arendal, Norway. Also stopping in Bergen for a few days. Looking for suggestions on must see/do things, including breweries/distilleries, family friendly activities, adventure, etc. …also golf. I want to golf there. At weird hours.

It's been raining for 46 straight hours here in Los Angeles. What does that volume of fresh water do to fish populations in estuaries? 🌎🧪🦑🐟

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Wild Green Memes has been cracking me up all week with movie poster parodies I wrote about WGM for American scientist magazine www.americanscientist.org/blog/macrosc...

Seems better than having to send a $35,000 instrument in for repair every few months. I've long planned to just have a flotilla of OpenCTDs at my disposal ... some friends in the robotics lab at Santa Clara are helping us with our vision. Stay tuned!

One of the cool things about OpenCTD that didn't make it into the paper is that, even if you do managed to catastrophically flood the entire device and destroy the electronics, it's built in such a way that it can be repaired for about $60.

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"Why is the water so brown and why is there so much sediment on top of the reef?" Here's a good illustration of why, and why we built Palos Verdes Reef modules up to 4 m tall: to withstand the constant flow of terrestrial sediment from landslides that will never stop.

Well well well, look who finally decided to take up residence in my owl box, 6 years after I put it up 🦉🌎

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Interested in #GIS in #rstats? I've recently heavily modified the @thecarpentries GIS in R curriculum to focus on #seagrass beds in Casco Bay for COBALT cobalt-casco.github.io/r-raster-vec... - this is all sf and terra, using tidyterra (w/ ggplot2) and leaflet for plotting. 🌍 #geo

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The newest Pacific Footballfish in the @nhmla.bsky.social Ichthyology Collections is resting comfortably in a tub full of formalin in the fume hood. In a couple of weeks, she’ll be fully processed and in a tank in the collections!

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Looking for a postdoc to work on microplastics in our museum specimens! We are extending the application window for this position for two more weeks and are flexible on starting date. If you know anyone interested, please forward. workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...

Been a hot minute since we felt and earthquake here

With storms coming in next week, we are officially calling it a field season! Hard to describe how much effort it takes to survey 361 dive sites in six months, but maybe the maps will help. Zoomed in views of Palos Verdes and Malibu to show the absurd coverage we have in Santa Monica Bay! 🌎🦑🧪

This was just published *in print* today in Continental Shelf Research. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... if your institution has access. authors.elsevier.com/a/1i67S-JmAw... if your institution doesn't have access, available to Jan 6 2024. After that, just ask! Happy to share.

New publication in collaboration with BOEM: 🧪🦑🦀🌎 Williams et al. 2023 Continental Shelf Research "Red rock crab (Cancer productus) movement is not influenced by electromagnetic fields produced by a submarine power transmission cable" authors.elsevier.com/a/1i67S-JmAw... (link good til Jan 6 2024)

Welp, looks like a few of us VRG'ers are headed to Arendal, Norway in May for GeoHab 2024! Who else will be there? 🦑🌎🧪 geohab.org/geohab-2024/

geohab-2024 | GeoHabgeohab.org

I just deactivated our exTwitter account. I hadn't logged on in a while, but just found our work sandwiched between intensely anti-semitic AND anti-Muslim material. We obviously don't condone either of those things. I'm at a loss for words that aren't full of anger, and we won't put up with that.

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🚨New Postdoc Position!!🚨 We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher for a two-year project examining microplastics in California marine fishes from the 1940s to the present using museum collections. Starting as soon as January! Spread the word, or apply to come work with us at the NHMLA!

Recruitmentworkforcenow.adp.com

Just did some quick summarization of our database. From > 6000 monthly plankton samples from King Harbor, California, from 1974-present, we have: > 675,000 larval fishes from ~150 different taxa and ~ 4.5 million fish eggs This doesn't count all our samples from Salton Sea from the late-80s. 🧪🐟🦑

After more than FIVE YEARS (!!) of being housed in a temporary location during contruction, our fish collection’s new home is ready for occupancy. Time to load up cart after cart of fishes – from eggs and larvae to adults and everything in between! 🧪🐟

Well this is super helpful … might have to update my old base R scripts even though they still work

I always feel so re-invigorated after I teach power analysis and all it can do to keep future you safe from making design mistakes in your study that should, in retrospect, have been obvious. biol607.github.io/lab/power_an...

I know red rock shrimp (Lysmata californica) are pals with the California moray eel (Gymnothorax mordax), but I like to think that the California spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus) has been accepted into their subtidal rocky reef crevice clique. San Clemente Island, California, 10m depth 🦑🐟🌎🧪

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Never really know what you’re going to find when doing MPA surveys …

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Ran into this beautiful ball of fish yesterday inside Point Dume State Marine Reserve, Malibu, California. Sargo (Anisotremus davidsonii) usually skitter away at the first sight of a diver, but apparently when you're traveling a few hundred deep, nobody's concerned. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯