Against the Wall

Kelton McMahon, a postdoctoral investigator in WHOI’s Fish Ecology Laboratory and a graduate of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, observes the fish living on a coral reef. McMahon has been studying the ecological links between reefs, where adult fish spend most of their time, and coastal mangrove swamps, the “nurseries” where they lay their eggs and where the juvenile fish grow up. Scientists like McMahon frequently don SCUBA gear to enter the watery world of the fish they study.(Photo courtesy of Simon Thorrold, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)