after meeting update

well, a few things... first, both meetings went great... the scallop session on the first day was very informative - learned that new jersey is sort of at the crossroads for the two Argopecten irradians varieties on the east coast - the southern subspecies that spawns in the fall and the northern subspecies that spawns in the summer... for years the jersey scallops exhibited similar traits to the southern scallop, but after a die-off, there were relatively few scallops... after a good set in the south shore of long island, the next summer, there was a good set in new jersey with scallops exhibiting traits to the northern variety... very interesting...

also, it seems that scallop fisheries have collapsed along the coast in the mid 1980s, although not all due to the brown tide, such as the case for new york... it is curious that the crashes have happened at similar times due to different reasons, but as of right now it is unexplained for all locations... the general consensus for lack of recovery is the low recruitment success due to low spawner densities, although i still believe it has something to do with a lack of suitable habitat and changing habitat...

but thanks to a plug during the day long scallop session, my poster was mobbed during the poster session... i literally did not get a break from the start of the poster session to the end, which is good... i even had some people approach me afterwards bc they wanted to see my poster but never got a chance to come over and talk to me about it... so it was very exciting...

as for benthics, that went well too... i saw a lot of interesting talks, including one about Codium fragile and epifauna associated with eelgrass, although it was in Canada, so not scallops... but it was interesting to see that they demonstrated higher species richness in codium versus eelgrass 0 driven in particular by more gastropods, which is interesting... they use an interesting method to sample, something i would like to learn more about... i also saw another talk about blue crabs using macroalgae as an alternate habitat in the absence of eelgrass, which was also interesting and something i think warrants some investigation up here...

oh and my talk went extremely well... i ran through it about 3-4 times during the meetings, and then once in my head right before my talk... i opened with a joke, which i think lightened my mood a bit and made me less nervous, although i could feel my right hand shaking a little bit at the beginning, they audience said they couldnt tell... as a matter of fact, many of the people i talked to said they would never have guessed that was my first talk... and it seemed like a lot of people came for my talk because a lot of people left right afterwards...

all in all it was a nice week... i got to see roger mann and richard lutz give talks... partied it up in providence, and even unexpectedly got to see toots and the maytals... it was a very good time...