Greeting New Arrivals

WHOI postdoctoral scholar Kirstin Meyer checks for new growth on monitoring plates she has hung off a dock in Eel Pond. She’s looking for barnacles, hydroids, and other small but tenacious organisms that cling to docks, rocks, and other hard surfaces under water. Later this spring, Meyer will launch experiments at various sites in Woods Hole to study biofouling communities, as they’re known. She wants to understand what’s driving subtidal succession: the order in which different species of encrusting organisms colonize submerged surfaces in coastal waters. Meyer thinks early settlers may change substrates in a way that helps later arrivals take hold. (Photo by Véronique LaCapra, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)