Image

Taking Attendance

Scientific studies often start with the basics—in this case, taking stock of what’s out there in the environment. This spring and summer, WHOI postdoctoral scholar Kirstin Meyer and guest student Nicole Pittoors hung plastic “fouling panels” in the water off the WHOI pier and in nearby Eel Pond to find out what would grow on them—as part of an experiment to assess how near-shore fouling communities develop and change over time. Here, Pittoors examines one of the panels under a microscope to count up the tunicates, bryozoans, and other kinds of marine invertebrates that have grown on it. (Photo by Véronique LaCapra, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)