Recap of Stanford Hopkins Marine Station event on 28 April 2018

On Saturday, 28 April 2018, from 1:30-3:30 pm, 41 attendees from the ACS Silicon Valley Section and from Stanford University met at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station (HMS) in Pacific Grove. 

For the first hour Dr. Amanda Whitmire, Head Librarian of Hopkins Miller Library and Assistant Director for the Station, covered the history of the Station and a long-term collaborative research project for collecting oceanographic data.   Her presentation also included her discovery of this data in the Library and her recent efforts to preserve and provide broader access to this data by having it digitized.  

As the oldest marine laboratory on the west coast (and third oldest in the U.S.), Hopkins has a long and eventful history (see slide show).The Seaside web pages created by the HMS Miller Library contains a history of marine science in the Southern Monterey Bay.   To learn more about the history of the HMS Miller Library, see Hopkins Marine Station Library, Old and New.  The Monterey Bay is an interesting, diverse ecosystem with a canyon that is as deep as the Grand Canyon (see images from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute). 

Amanda talked about the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) (Program) between the Hopkins Marine Station and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, a collaborative effort to understand the biology and physical oceanography of the Monterey Bay area by collecting samples weekly for decades.  The Hopkins CalCOFI data is available online because of a digitization project spearheaded by Amanda.   (Learn more about recent efforts CalCOFI at Scripps.)  Amanda noted that several researchers were at the White Shark Café, an area in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to learn more why sharks travel to this area.

For the second hour, attendees were divided into two groups and led on tours by Betsy and Paul, graduate students at HMS.   Tours included research by the 10 faculty research groups at HMS.   The tour of the library included using two 3D printers to create customized tags and Arduino kits (microprocessors) to help with tasks such as maintaining conditions in aquariums.   For people who were unable to attend this event, consider attending a public HMS tour or becoming a Friend of the Hopkins Marine Station.

For pictures of this event, see page five of the ACS Silicon Valley Newsletter, June 2018 issue.