ecotoxicology

Fish New Research Plastic Scientist!

A story about fish, plastic debris and sex

This is a guest post by Chelsea Rochman. Chelsea is a post-doc at the University of California Davis. This is her fourth guest post at DSN, and the first one…

Fish New Research Plastic Scientist!

Guest post: Playing Detective in the Great Blue Sea

Miriam Goldstein March 5, 2014 Chelsea Rochman ecotoxicology marine debris plastic pollution

You may have heard me say it once, and I’ll say it again: the oceans are a toilet bowl for our waste. Throughout history, our solution to pollution has oftentimes been “dilution”. As a consequence, chemical pollution is now ubiquitous in our oceans as a result of industrialization, waste-management strategies (and/or lack thereof), natural disasters, etc….

As such, it becomes my job to try and solve this mystery and basically play detective on the open sea. What puzzle am I trying to unravel? Well, I’ll warn you, it’s a trashy one…

Fish New Research Plastic

Guest post: The invisible consequences of mistaking plastic for dinner

Miriam Goldstein December 2, 2013 Chelsea Rochman ecotoxicology marine debris plastic pollution

The long and windy path to a Ph.D. is lined with blood, sweat and tears. Like a roller coaster, it can be filled with joy, anxiety, fear and even nausea. This story is regarding one chapter of my dissertation, one that filled me with all these emotions and lead me to the conclusion that even in science, sh%* happens. But in this story, what we could not control lead us to better scientific conclusions with greater environmental realism. Due to what may seem like an experimental shortcoming, we were able to answer an important “so what?” question related to plastic marine debris.