About

This blog

This blog was started as a creative outlet during nap times with my infant son, which were of random length and timing. I’ve maintained it partly to take care of my need for doing something productive during those times that doesn’t involve work, laundry, or dishes, and partly because blogging has helped me remember how much I love writing.

Many of my posts are sarcastic, unless they are about science–in that case I have made them as accurate as possible.

Me

I’m a marine scientist and a mom and wife. I like to travel, eat good food and drink ok wine, surf, and snuggle cats.

My science is multi-disciplinary, and I’m broadly interested in how humans are screwing up the coastal marine environment (and what we can do about it). Most of my prior work has focused on coral reefs in Belize, Honduras, the Republic of Kiribati, the US Pacific Remote Island Areas, and the US Virgin Islands. Now I work primarily in places where the US military has coastal bases.

I grew up in northern California and am a product, from K-PhD, of the California public school system. I graduated with my PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2009. Then I taught at Miracosta College and wrote a book about coral reef field work (maybe one day it’ll be published), before moving to Australia to work as a postdoc at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization near Sydney. I also taught at the University of San Diego as an adjunct and was an assistant professor at UMass Boston before taking a job as a civilian federal scientist with the Navy.

I might not survive without coffee and chocolate.