Career advice for those who cannot walk on water—build bridges!

Abstract

From landlocked Iowa to the outback of Australia and the interior of Siberia, I found water and opportunities to build bridges between disciplines and among scientists from different countries and cultures. What I have learned is that preparation, persistence when challenged, daring to follow the path of opportunity, and generously sustaining collaborations can lead to a successful, adventure-filled, and satisfying career.

I was on a lake at 2 a.m. during a full lunar eclipse and I wanted to do science. Enter the dead body.

It was 1982 in the middle of the night, and I was using an echo sounder on a New Hampshire lake to track the behavioural response of a diel vertical migrator (Chaoborus, the planktonic larvae of the lake fly) to a full lunar eclipse. Suddenly, an enormous black signal—bigger than any fish or anything I had ever seen before—appeared on the printout of the echosounder, floating at the depth of the thermocline. Doug, the undergraduate student working with me, pleaded for permission to lower my net (30-cm diameter) down into the water column to try and nab this large mysterious object. I replied emphatically, “No! We’re not going to risk damaging my net on whatever that is”. I was using the net to collect samples to determine whether the signals from my echo sounder were Chaoborus. I had purchased the expensive net using monies from a research award from the International Women’s Fishing Association (which is still assisting graduate students). So, I was reluctant to sacrifice this hard won piece of equipment to the unknown.

Finally, the object drifted off screen. Meanwhile, the moon had become the eponymous “Blood Moon”, shrouded by the earth’s shadow but with an eerie red tinge. At about this moment, a banshee wail sounded across the lake from onshore. To many, the combination of a Blood Moon and banshee howls would have been unnerving, but my attention was fixed on the echo sounder, which showed that Chaoborus was doing exactly what I had expected. The insect had stayed deep below the thermocline while the full moon shone, but during the eclipse it ascended upwards through the thermocline. Once the moon was fully occluded, all Chaoborus moved into the epilimnion, despite the presence of fish. The insect was responding to subtle changes in exceedingly low levels of light, and I was thrilled!

But this thrill was soon replaced by a different kind of excitement, one mixed with apprehension. The next morning, I discovered that a drowning had occurred in the lake ∼2 h before Doug and I began sampling. I immediately called the local police who put me in touch with the dive team that was searching for the body. They urged me to meet them at the lake where I showed them the printout and where we had been sampling. Their reply: “You spotted the body”. A man had drowned while fishing in the middle of the lake the previous night. Badly inebriated, he had gotten into an argument with his fishing buddy and stepped out of the boat intending to walk to shore. The banshee-like howl? A family member’s response upon first learning of the man’s demise. Although the dive team and I searched for the body using my echo sounder, we had no luck. By then, it had apparently sunk to the lake bottom and was no longer detectable using acoustics.

This true story is still told among ecology graduate students at Dartmouth College where I completed my PhD research (e.g. Moore, 1986, 1988), and it conveys one of the many adventures I have had in the field during my career. But there’s more than a story here. The sampling I did on that Blood Moon night was not part of my dissertation research; it was a side project that I was pursuing for fun. This research diversion later led to a publication with marine and freshwater scientists about the usefulness of acoustic techniques for observing zooplankton (Smith et al., 1992), and it led to research that my students and I pursued 15 years later regarding effects of artificial light at night on the vertical distribution of aquatic organisms in lakes across an urban to rural gradient (Moore et al., 2001, 2006). Despite the challenges that arose during that full lunar eclipse, the science was fun and worthwhile because of the insights gained.

Seek people whose judgement you trust

Not all challenges I encountered during my career, however, surfaced from unexpected situations in the field. Being a young woman in the world of science in the mid-1970s and 1980s had its burdens as it still can today. I worked in all-male laboratories during my MS and PhD training, which was quite normal at the time. Fortunately, I had acquired water skills that prepared me well for field research on lakes and rivers because I had worked as a public life guard, a swimming instructor at a camp, and a canoe guide in the Boundary Waters of the United States and Canada prior to entering graduate school. In fact, the men in my first laboratory group respected me for those skills, especially after I insisted on occupying the stern position of canoes whenever we ventured out onto the middle of windy lakes for sampling. None of the men knew how to steer a canoe; yet, canoes were our vessel of choice because they were more easily transported to distant lakes than motor boats.

But, my water skills did not shield me from sexual harassment. For example, a graduate student intentionally flashed his private parts while we worked together alone in the field in a remote location. This happened more than once. I was frightened as to what might occur next, so I pretended to ignore the graduate student while silently planning multiple escape routes in case that became necessary. Thankfully, it did not.

Later in my career, I experienced additional difficulties because of my gender, but here the discrimination was more subtle, yet still hurtful and consequential. Among these experiences, the ones that were perhaps more pernicious in terms of my career development involved exclusion from informal opportunities to discuss science that were available only to men. I remember feeling isolated, confused, and very much alone in dealing with these experiences because there was no Human Resources Office or ombudsperson to turn to. So, I stumbled forward by focusing on the science.

In hindsight, the difficulties I experienced as a woman in science pale in comparison to the struggles of other female scientists. But, I also believe that enormous progress towards gender equality has occurred globally for women in science during the last 40–50 years, resulting in a more welcoming work environment, both in the field and laboratory. In many countries, women now lead our scientific research societies, journal editorial boards, funding agencies, and nominating committees for national and international awards. But there is more to be done, particularly at the level of institutional policy (Greider et al., 2019), and we must continually guard against new barriers of inequity creeping into our workplaces while watching for old, hidden ones that can make people of an underrepresented gender or ethnicity uncomfortable. Importantly, if you encounter such barriers, do not go it alone like I did. Seek out people whose judgement you trust for guidance in how to address these situations promptly.

“Take math courses until you get a C”

Barriers to personal progress in science can also arise from undeveloped skills. “Take math courses until you get a C” is what G. Evelyn Hutchinson, the eminent ecologist (Hutchinson, 2011), told me and other graduate students at Dartmouth College when he visited our small group in the mid-1980s. I have recalled his wise advice numerous times throughout my career, and I passed it on to my students. Thankfully, I received solid statistical training, both in parametric and nonparametric statistics, as a graduate student, and I was introduced to mathematical modelling while taking a simulation modelling course during a sabbatical leave. But, I always wished that I had had more exposure to quantitative techniques, for example to multivariate statistics, the topic of a course I avoided during my graduate training to my perpetual regret. Ours is a number-driven world, and knowledge of statistics, mathematical modelling, data visualization techniques, machine learning, computer programming, etc., are absolutely essential for today’s aquatic scientists. So, throw out any concerns about maths courses tarnishing your grade point average and stomp out all self-doubt about your ability to do maths. Instead, grab every opportunity to expand, upgrade, and hone your quantitative skills. You will never regret this.

This tip, however, comes with a caveat. You also need a “feeling for the organism” (Keller, 1983), community or ecosystem described by the data. Without the intimate hands-on knowledge that comes from field and laboratory work with the focal organisms or ecosystems, spotting spurious values in the data or false trends becomes difficult and reaching false conclusions all the more likely. So, if you become a data geek, in love with meta-analyses, for example include a collaborator or a friendly reviewer who has direct experience collecting those data.

Seize opportunities

As my earlier story of the “Blood Moon” night illustrated, seizing unexpected opportunities will likely be rewarding and adventure rich, but your career path may not be a direct one or result in numerous papers published on a single scientific topic. Publishing is unquestionably very important, but snapping up alternative opportunities such as field work and public science outreach can also be professionally enriching, providing opportunity for travel and connections with scientists and nonscientists. Here, I provide two examples from my experience.

For my MS research at Iowa State University in 1976–1977, I investigated effects of a nitrogen-rich sewage effluent on benthic macroinvertebrate diversity in a Midwestern river. Although this project provided me with a solid foundation in applied aquatic ecology, I must admit that I spent many evenings imagining alternative research projects in more picturesque locations, e.g. an alpine lake or a tumbling mountain stream. This resulted in me applying for a Fulbright fellowship and 15 glorious months in New Zealand where I explored patterns of zooplankton vertical migration in mountain lakes with and without fish. Choosing my lakes strategically, I maximized travel throughout this spectacular country. Although I did not publish my New Zealand research, this first international experience bolstered my self-confidence and independence, later convincing me to pursue a PhD in aquatic ecology. Also, while there, I interacted with an Australian expert on saline lakes who invited me 4 years later to participate in a 7-week zooplankton survey that spanned the Australian outback, an adventure and honeymoon for me and my husband (a terrestrial ecologist) who accompanied us as an auto mechanic! Upon returning to the United States, my husband and I wrote and published an article, describing our outback experiences, for the Des Moines Register newspaper, the only article for which either one of us has ever been paid!

A public science outreach project arrived shortly after I had received tenure at Wellesley College when I felt free to pursue alternative adventures. Jane Goldman, an artist from the local Boston area, who sometimes taught at the college, inquired if I would be interested in helping her compete for a commission from the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), which operates Boston’s Logan International Airport. The challenge was to design an art installation for the floor of a new long walkway linking the two most distant terminals at the airport. Jane, a Texas native who had recently moved to Boston, chose a marine theme because the airport is located on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. She needed guidance in choosing which organisms to feature and how to organize them. My husband, one of the world’s best idea generators, suggested that the organisms in the long walkway depict a depth gradient extending from shore to the depths beyond the continental shelf. So my students and I had great fun showing Jane various local marine organisms from which she chose those that could best be displayed in a terrazzo (mosaic) floor. Jane not only won the commission, but the two of us were subsequently asked to design two more walkways in which we featured mesopelagic organisms from the Northwest Atlantic in one walkway and benthic deep sea organisms in the other. So, a Texan and an Iowan with her students designed the marine walkways that now catch the eye of travellers from around the world. But the story does not end here. Collaborating with a computer scientist and the artist, we subsequently applied to the US National Science Foundation (US NSF) for funding to develop interactive computer programmes to be installed in kiosks within the airport that would allow the public to explore the organisms within the airport walkways, their behaviour, and conservation status. Although our application was not funded, I still take pride in knowing that two of my favourite marine organisms—the diatom Chaetoceros and a pteropod (sea butterfly)—are displayed in a public space that will outlast me. Engaging in public science outreach is not only fun, but it can hone personal skills (e.g. grant writing and public communication) and benefit society, e.g. by enhancing scientific literacy.

Build bridges between subdisciplines

About 7 years ago, some members of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography expressed concern about the “the salty divide”, a term referring to the self-segregation of freshwater and marine scientists (Kavanaugh et al., 2013; Cole, 2013; Marra, 2014). Limnologists and oceanographers were seldom citing each other’s papers; they were dividing themselves by attending separate meetings focusing on their respective subdisciplines (another divide, more aptly described as a chasm, occurs between aquatic and terrestrial ecologists; Stergiou and Browman, 2005). Discussion of “the salty divide” caught my attention largely because I felt I had crossed it, under duress, 25 years earlier.

I was trained as a limnologist, something I hesitate to admit, especially in an article in this particular journal. However, I was hired by Wellesley College (an undergraduate, liberal arts college for women) to teach marine biology, despite my lack of any formal training in this discipline. This unusual hire probably happened because the Wellesley College biology faculty were hiring new faculty, in part, on the basis of their research achievements, and it is not unusual for faculty to be asked to teach courses outside their area of expertise. So, as a new assistant professor, I suddenly needed to become salty—a marine scientist. I worked like the devil to familiarize myself with the discipline—by reading scientific papers and multiple textbooks, attending US NSF-sponsored workshops for marine educators, spending my summer vacations at the seashore or at marine field stations, and inviting leading marine scientists to come to Wellesley College to deliver lectures and to speak and meet with my marine biology students.

I learned an enormous amount from this sudden immersion into marine ecology, and it enriched my freshwater research and teaching, especially when I began taking American students and research colleagues to Lake Baikal in Siberia (see below for explanation of Lake Baikal opportunity). For example, the role of large crustaceans (isopods, crabs) as benthic scavengers on the deep sea floor is well known, but few people in the West realize that something similar occurs in L. Baikal, the largest (volumetrically), and deepest lake in the world that functions more like an ocean than even the largest Laurentian Great Lakes (but see Janssen et al., 2014; Pritt et al., 2014 for how larval fish and fish recruitment in L. Baikal, the LGL, and the ocean are similar). At L. Baikal, there is a local legend that the Russian mafia prefer to dispose of dead bodies in the lake because nearly nothing is left after 48 h. So, when my Wellesley College students became intrigued with this tale, I encouraged them to test it using food fall experiments (baited with fish; not human remains) patterned after those performed in the ocean. The result? The mafia’s alleged disposal site for dead bodies is a good idea! In slightly <48 h, hundreds of mostly endemic gammarids and snails devoured 60–100% of the fish bait in our traps deployed along a water depth gradient (Hughes et al., 2008).

Another example of bridging the salty divide comes from my work with colleagues and students on the microbial loop and its potential influence on carbon cycling in Lake Baikal. Although now recognized to be important in oligotrophic lakes, the microbial loop was first described in the ocean (Azam et al., 1983). I had emphasized this concept annually in my marine biology course at Wellesley College, and it became so embedded in my mind that I began wondering if and how the microbial loop was functioning in the pelagic waters of L. Baikal. Although a stable isotope investigation had previously proclaimed that the lake had a simple pelagic food web (i.e. diatoms–copepods–fish–seal), I suspected otherwise. Results of in situ feeding experiments done with a colleague and undergraduates confirmed my hunch that most of the carbon ingested by the dominant zooplankter in L. Baikal comes from mixotrophic ciliates within the lake’s well-developed microbial food web (Moore et al., 2019). In other words, the lake’s summer food web and the biogeochemical cycling of carbon are much more complex—and oceanic—than previously thought. The larger lesson here for young scientists is that you may resist teaching courses in areas outside your expertise, but doing so can invigorate your research and engage talented undergraduates while expanding and diversifying your knowledge (Figure 1).

Build interdisciplinary bridges

Now I must explain how this remarkable opportunity to teach and conduct research at L. Baikal came about, because this vignette illustrates well the rich rewards of building interdisciplinary bridges plus the power of random conversations! During my third year as an assistant professor at WC, a new professor in the Russian Department, and one of the world’s most avid fishers, invited me to lunch because he wanted to know where the good spots for trout fishing were in the local Boston area (there are none!). After the trout conversation concluded abruptly, we immediately began discussing Lake Baikal. Why? Whenever you bring a Russianist and a limnologist together, the conversation will beeline to this lake because it looms large in Russian culture and in the field of limnology. For Russians, the lake represents the unspoiled beauty of the Russian motherland, and all Russians either know or recognize the lake’s anthem—“Glorious Sea, Sacred Baikal”. For limnologists and evolutionary biologists, Lake Baikal is a treasure chest of biodiversity harbouring more endemic plant and animal species than any other lake in the world (Moore et al., 2009). So, the Wellesley College Russian professor and I ended our lunch vowing that once we both had tenure we would seek funding to finance a reconnaissance trip to the lake to determine if we could teach an interdisciplinary field course there that would bring together students interested in Russian language and culture with students of the aquatic sciences. After making that reconnaissance trip in 2000, we taught our first interdisciplinary course titled, Lake Baikal: the Soul of Siberia, to Wellesley College students on-site in 2001 and nearly every other year since then.

Importantly, the Lake Baikal course could never have happened without the language skills and knowledge of Russian culture that my faculty colleague possessed. Although I had taken a year of undergraduate college Russian at Colorado College, and I can speak it with the fluency of a 3-year old, my language skills were sorely inadequate for the task! Unknown to both of us at the time, the trust and friendships established with our Russian scientific colleagues during the early years of this course would later spawn multiple research investigations involving scientists from five different countries (see below).

Be daring

The Lake Baikal course provided a way for me to integrate teaching with my research, which is essential at an institution with equally high teaching and research expectations of its faculty. Of course, there are obvious ways of combining research and teaching such as offering an advanced course in which students are encouraged to pursue independent research projects in the faculty member’s research area and illustrating general principles in introductory courses using the published research of the faculty member’s laboratory group. But, be more daring than this! Develop a new course for students, a faculty development seminar, or a special symposium at a research conference on a new topic, forcing you to explore novel ways of thinking and doing (e.g. new, emerging data visualization techniques) that will benefit your research and teaching. If you do not create a mutualistic relationship between your research and teaching, you will pursue two full time careers simultaneously and drive yourself nuts. I speak from experience because I kept my teaching (marine biology, tropical ecology, and introductory organismal biology) and research (freshwater ecology; e.g. Moore et al., 1994, 1997) separate for my first 16 years at Wellesley College. It took the simultaneous arrival of a cancer diagnosis and my first opportunity to teach at L. Baikal for me to realize the necessity and benefits of combining teaching with research. After a year of personal leave, and with this new approach, I was able to continue and even expand my research during the last two decades of my college career via new collaborations. Collaboration also brings support, and the efforts of my medical team and the unwavering support of my husband, who accompanied me as my “teaching assistant” on many teaching trips to L. Baikal, were essential during this transition period.

Bridge scientific cultures

Collaborations that bridge scientific cultures can also lead to scientific breakthroughs. Although aquatic scientists from different countries may share a common sub-discipline such as oceanography or limnology, their approaches to research will likely differ due to historical differences in training and funding within their countries. For example, many of my Russian colleagues are superb taxonomists, capable of identifying nearly anything aquatic, and often terrestrial, to the species level, whereas I am lousy at this as are most of my US colleagues. Aquatic scientists in the United States often receive cursory training in taxonomy, if at all, because this discipline fell out of favour decades ago as experimentation, quantitative analyses, and molecular techniques were emphasized. So, when my Russian scientific colleagues first invited me to work with them, I immediately suggested that we apply for funding to investigate their 60-year data set describing the biological and physical characteristics of Lake Baikal’s pelagic zone. They brought the high-resolution taxonomic data; myself and a US colleague organized a team of faculty and students to help with meetings and the needed quantitative analyses.

Together we wrote a proposal to secure funding from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This funding brought our Russian colleagues to the United States for two working group meetings, and our final meeting occurred on site at L. Baikal. Although NCEAS does not normally fund working groups that focus on a single data set from a single sampling location, the uniqueness and quality of the Russians’ data overcame these funding criteria. These data, collected by three generations of limnologists, from the same Russian family, their students, and staff, have impressively high taxonomic and temporal resolution of plankton dynamics, with nearly all organisms identified to species (and often to life stage), as well as water temperature and transparency records. Thanks to my Russian colleagues’ amazing taxonomic work and diligent sampling through all seasons of the year, plus the quantitative skills of one of my Western aquatic colleagues, we were able to show that this lake was responding both physically and biologically to contemporary climate change (Hampton et al., 2008; Izmest’eva et al., 2016). At the time, this was surprising news, because it was thought that a lake as deep, cold, and large as Lake Baikal, and especially one with an unusual deep-water renewal process (Schmid et al., 2008; Tsimitri et al., 2015), would be relatively resistant to climate change.

I come from a sharing culture in rural Iowa, so it was readily apparent that the first act of great generosity by my Russian colleagues in sharing their data was based on trust and the knowledge that we would be partners in the work that followed. Sharing meals, celebrating birthdays, contributing resources (e.g. to refurbish a laboratory at Lake Baikal), and sharing authorship on papers and presentations, i.e. supporting each other, have helped sustain this collaboration and made it a pleasure (see also Popper, 2020). Subsequently, our collaboration expanded and led to substantially more research funding from the US National Science Foundation and other sources, enabling myself, additional Western scientists from multiple countries (United States, Canada, Norway) as well as Russian and Japanese scientists to explore not only effects of contemporary climate change on plankton genetic, taxonomic, and functional biodiversity (e.g. Figure 2; Hampton et al., 2014; Katz et al., 2015; Izmest’eva et al., 2016; O’Donnell et al., 2017;,Bowman et al., 2018, 2019; Moore et al., 2019; Ozersky et al., 2020; Wilburn et al., 2020) but also contaminant burdens in the Baikal seal (Ozersky et al., 2017; Poste et al., 2018) and effects of coastal eutrophication on this unique aquatic ecosystem (Timoshkin et al., 2018). So, my first, adventurous teaching trip in 2001 was followed by more than a dozen additional trips to L. Baikal where I now have many dear Russian friends and colleagues. Bridging disciplines between research and teaching and among scientists from different countries and cultures has been and continues to be hugely rewarding and fun.

So my advice to young scientists is that you take advantage of every opportunity to develop your skills, particularly in quantitative analysis and taxonomy; persist when challenged physically, intellectually and with inequities; dare to follow paths of opportunity even when the destination is not clear; and be generous in sustaining collaborations, especially those that bridge disciplinary and cultural divides. This approach can lead to an adventure-filled and satisfying career, as my experience attests. Career opportunities and my choices have taken me on adventures around the world, but my greatest successes have come from building bridges between disciplines and among scientists and cultures.

Data availability statement

No new data were generated or analysed for this essay.

Food for Thought articles are essays in which the author provides their perspective on a research area, topic, or issue. They are intended to provide contributors with a forum through which to air their own views and experiences, with few of the constraints that govern standard research articles. This Food for Thought article is one in a series solicited from leading figures in the fisheries and aquatic sciences community. The objective is to offer lessons and insights from their careers in an accessible and pedagogical form from which the community, and particularly early career scientists, will benefit.

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and Oxford University Press are pleased to make these Food for Thought articles immediately available as free access documents.

Acknowledgements

I thank Howard Browman for the invitation to write this essay and for encouraging me to share personal stories previously buried under many layers of sediment. Martina Königer, Amanda Gardner, Nicholas Rodenhouse, and an anonymous reviewer provided numerous helpful suggestions. I am most indebted, however, to my mentors, colleagues, and students who enriched my career in unfathomable ways.

References