MEES is pleased to announce the winners of the first MEES annual photo contest. Thank you to all that entered and congratulations to the winners! There were many thoughtfully produced entries submitted to the MEES photo contest. The photographs that were chosen as winners, reflect the many different and creative ways that illustrate and answer the 2007 contest theme "Capturing MEES".

First Place

The picture "Arctic Science" was taken during the AMASE expedition (Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition) in 2006 by Kjell Ove Storvik. The purpose of AMASE is to understand how life and geology interact in the cold environment of Svalbard as a proxy for Mars. Svalbard is an artic island located at 77 to 80 degrees N.
As a member of the AMASE team, first place winner of the very first MEES photo contest, Verena Starke's goal was to explore the microbial diversity and biosignatures of arctic springs, soils, sediments and ice, in particular by using molecular techniques. In the picture she was working at Jotun springs, which is teeming with microorganisms. At that particular moment, she was doing ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) measurements, an assay for measuring metabolic activity by light, which is emitted during the luciferase reaction. Jotun and nearby Troll Spring are the northernmost known thermal springs on land. They will be major sampling sites for Verena's dissertation work.
Why is this expedition so important to her? She was fortunate to be part of the AMASE expedition in 2005, 2006 and 2007. It has given her the opportunity to learn and to use new methods in the field as well as in the laboratory, and has provided valuable and challenging field experiences for her scientific growth. AMASE doesn't just mean being in a great place like Svalbard, but it also means working with a great bunch of people, who are her mentors and friends. One thing that she has learned from this expedition is that the success of the expedition depends on everyone on the team putting the team first; putting the group objectives before their personal objectives. You can learn more about AMASE at http://amase.ciw.edu.

Second Place

The photo "Octrawler" was taken in Ocean City, MD in November 2004. Bill Connelly was helping P.I.'s Dave Secor and Ed Houde in the evaluation of the use of neritic (near-shore) habitat by young-of-the-year bluefish. The objective of the project was to compare growth rates and diet data from juvenile bluefish collected in the Chesapeake Bay to those collected from coastal habitats. They were using a commercial fisherman's boat to collect bluefish around the Ocean City area using a large bottom trawl, and the boat in the photo was docked just ahead of the boat they were using. Bill hadn't realized that Ocean City was such a big commercial fishing port. "I've only worked with commercial fishers in the Bay, who operate on a much smaller scale, so that scene really impressed me" says second place winner, Bill Connelly.

Third Place

The Menhaden Larval Influx project was a response the concern of several management agencies, including Maryland DNR, the NOAA Chesapeake Bay office, and the ASMFC, over the low recruitment (survival to the juvenile stage) of Atlantic menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay over since the early 1990s. The abundance of juvenile menhaden in the Bay depends upon successful transport of the larvae from offshore spawning areas to the mouth of the Bay and survival of the larvae to the juvenile stage. The objectives of the cruises are to document the influx of larval menhaden into the Bay and determine how environmental factors affect the variability of the influx. From the larvae we collect, Carlos Lozano, a MEES masters student of Ed Houde's, is measuring sizes, determining hatch dates, evaluating growth rates, and collecting diet data. The distributions of larval hatch dates and growth rates will be compared to the distributions of hatch dates and growth rates for juveniles collected later in the year to see when the survivors (the juveniles collected later in the year) were born and how quickly they grew when they were larvae. The Larval Influx cruises run from November to April, and we try to sample at different times with regard to the tidal cycle and day-night cycle. The weather has been usually warm and calm for most of our cruises during the past two years, and third place winner, Bill Connelly took "2early" just after dawn on a really foggy morning in January 2006. Everyone was having a hard time waking up, which is evident by the unfocused stares of Adriana Hashinaga and Rebecca Wingate who are shown in the picture.