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Who Grows There?

August 10, 2017

WHOI postdoctoral scholar Kirstin Meyer (left) collects plastic monitoring panels that have been hanging in the water off the WHOI pier, with help from guest student Nicole Pittoors (right) and WHOI visitor Megan Bouch (center). The panels are covered with tunicates, bryozoans, and other marine invertebrates that are part of the fouling community—organisms that grow in abundance on docks, ships, rocks, and other hard underwater surfaces. This spring and summer Meyer conducted experiments off the WHOI pier and in nearby Eel Pond, to understand how and why local near-shore fouling communities develop and change over time. (Photo by Véronique LaCapra, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)